


The Potential of You and Me

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mirror Sex, Mission Fic, Non-Graphic Torture, Voyeurism, vaguely dubcon due to said voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:01:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24427675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: There's a traitor in Blackwatch.There's a traitor in Blackwatch and Jesse has found himself with unlimited access to HQ's surveillance system - the perfect opportunity to figure out who's betraying them.If only he was a good enough person to use it responsibly.
Relationships: Jesse McCree & Sombra | Olivia Colomar, Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 25
Kudos: 95





	The Potential of You and Me

**Author's Note:**

> this dang fic  
> I wrote 20k of it back in 2018, then deleted three quarters of it and have been slowly rewriting and adding to it ever since. I don't know why I had such a mental block with it, but it is finally here and done
> 
> I'm normally pretty slavish to canon, but Sombra's timeline is - off, here. I think I kind of pushed it forward a few years? It's dang hard to tell, because there are aren't a lot of hard dates connected with Sombra. whatever, she's one of my favorite people to write and her and Jesse's relationship here is important to me and the story
> 
> title from Death Cab's ["I Will Possess Your Heart"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wqa86TnRk) because yay stalking

Jesse doesn’t remember the first time they saw each other - it must have been on an op somewhere. One of those jobs involving people that aren’t part of Blackwatch and aren’t a member of an enemy organization, but are in a circle just close enough that sometimes they’ll overlap into a Venn diagram of crime and information. He does know the first time they really talked, though. It was a bar in Dorado, a stop on his way up to California after a quiet solo mission in Guadalajara.

He’s drinking godawful tequila that he’s trying not to taste and staring blindly at the tiny television up near the ceiling when a glass of something rich and golden is pushed over to him, cold against the back of his hand. Jesse looks over to see bright hair and brighter eyes that are crinkled in amusement at him. 

“This is better than the shit you’re drinking, I promise,” she says in Spanish.

He eyes her over, vague recollections filtering through an alcohol fuzzed brain to place her in his world, but he’s not sure which side she’s on. “Forgive me for not wantin’ to accept drinks from strangers,” he replies in the same language.

“Oh, but we aren’t strangers, Jesse McCree. I remember you from Ilios, and from Lisbon, and that one time in Morocco. With the dead whale.” They both automatically wince in unison at the memory. It was...gooey.

“We’ve been in the same places at the same time. Still doesn’t make us friends.”

She makes an elegant movement with her shoulders, the dim bar lights shining off of the silver on her coat. “Perhaps not. But I am always looking for allies.” She holds out a thin-fingered hand tipped with worryingly pointed fingernails. “Sombra.”

Jesse shakes, reservedly. “Not good enough allies for a last name?”

Sombra gives a sharp smile, eyebrow arching. “Even my friends don’t get to have that.”

They talk quietly about this and that. They both flirt, but with no real intention of it going anywhere, just an automatic flexing of bar-etiquette muscles. After a lazy argument about the best bar in Seville, Sombra gets up to leave. She presses cool lips to Jesse’s cheek on her way out, but it doesn’t feel sexual at all. It’s a promise of connection, an acknowledgement that they now have the start of...something, something that could turn into a kinship of some type. When he pulls his wallet out of his back pocket to pay sometime later, he finds a card tucked in amongst the cash of a dozen countries. It’s completely blank but for a raised purple print of a stylized sugar skull on one side. He turns it over, fingering it thoughtfully before tucking it back in.

The next time they meet he’s in another bar, this time in Vancouver. Jesse sees a flash of a distinctive shade of purple reflected in a mirror, and turns to see Sombra accepting a glass of sangria from the bartender. He walks over, unsurprised when Sombra shows no shock at him being there.

“Better than the tequila from last time?” he asks.

“Does the job,” she says, and he follows her to a table where he can put his back to the wall.

That’s how it goes - they see each other every once in a while at a drinking establishment somewhere in the world. Sometimes Jesse approaches her, sometimes Sombra comes to him. She’s only ever there when Jesse is alone, even when he’s on a mission where he has a team or a partner. That happens often enough that he realizes it’s on purpose, finds it amusing and frustrating that he can never fucking find her when there’s someone else with him.

They talk shop, though not in detail. She knows that he’s an agent in Blackwatch, he knows that she’s a hacker who will sell her skills to the highest bidder. He supposes that she might have some moral compunctions about who to work with, but hasn’t seen any yet. He makes sure not to tell her anything that could be used against himself or the organization, though he feels like she knows it all anyways.

One day Jesse idly mentions a name to her, a technofreak he knows of in Texas who might be able to help her with the issues she’s been having with the grafts on her spine. When he goes back to the same bar the next day she’s not there, though she is the day after. She has an actual smile on her face, untainted by the usual sardonic edge.

“Thank you, for the contact. He fixed some connections I couldn’t access and made some improvements, so now I’m not getting those shocks and have better integration with the software I’ve been working on.” 

Jesse smiles a bit. Sombra’s not a bad person, he doesn’t believe. More than anything he thinks she’s lonely, though she would deny it to her grave. She looks at his face carefully for a moment, then pulls a small memory stick out of nowhere and shoves it over to him.

“A thank you, for the help.” He eyes it suspiciously, not hiding his trepidation at accepting anything tech-related from her. She rolls her eyes, not without fondness. “It won’t bite, it won’t blow up. Have your people look at it if you want, though if I were you I’d keep it to myself. Just something you might find useful.” Sombra throws back the rest of her drink, presses a kiss to the corner of Jesse’s mouth, and is gone in a flicker of violet and silver.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse tucks the stick in his pocket and forgets about it for a few days. When emptying his pockets out after a bad mission to sort through what’s soaked in tacky blood and what’s salvageable, he finds it again. He sets it aside, taking it to Danny the next day. Danny is Blackwatch’s pet tech guy, one of the only members never allowed out on missions because of the valuable information in his head.

He hands it to Danny, tells him that it’s a present from a hacker friend and he just wants to make sure that he won’t compromise them if he plugs it into their system. Danny nods, scuttling back with it to his electronic lair. Jesse doesn’t bother saying not to peek at the information inside - after years of Blackwatch experience Danny knows not to look where he shouldn’t. 

Danny gives him the stick the next day, saying that there’s a complicated program on it but nothing that would infiltrate anything they have. Jesse takes it with a nod, handing a bottle of Danny’s favorite absinthe to him in thanks for his discretion. Danny’s a weird guy even by Blackwatch standards, but always reliable.

Jesse goes back to his quarters and sits at his desk, flipping the stick over in his fingers. He shrugs to himself and plugs it into his desk computer. Let’s see how Sombra thanks her friends.

The screen goes black, before Sombra’s signature glowing purple sugar skull appears. It fades, and a progress bar appears and begins to fill up very slowly. Jesse waits until he gets bored and goes to take a shower, and by the time he’s returned the screen is filled with a series of listings and sublistings. Some are nonsense, some seem to be the abbreviated names of places - BWKit, OWMes, BWTra. That last one has an arrow next to it, and when Jesse clicks it, it separates into subdivisions: BWTra1, BWTra2, and so on. Jesse taps the first one, and suddenly his screen is filled with a live audio and visual feed of the largest of the training rooms that Blackwatch uses. He has a crystal clear overhead view of Captain Ana Amari showing the newest Overwatch recruits how to activate and throw biotic emitters accurately.

Holy shit. Sombra gave him access to the surveillance system. And given how many times he saw “OW” in those names, it likely covers the whole of headquarters. Jesse shuts down the program and pulls the stick out. This is...worrying.

Jesse throws on pants and hightails it back to the tech area. He barges into Danny’s office, and the man literally jumps out of his chair. 

“That stick I gave you to check over. Is there any way, any way at all that it could broadcast information? Transmit it anywhere?”

Danny is cowering, and Jesse reins himself in. Using physical intimidation with teammates isn’t his style, and it’s particularly not fair to a guy who was recruited for his brain and not his body. Jesse picks Danny up from where he landed on the floor and sets him in his chair, dusting him off. 

“N-no. It just had an executable program. I mean, without opening it myself I don’t know what it might be, but there are no viruses or worms, nothing that could be infectious or sent out. Nothing to broadcast at all.”

“You’re positive.”

Danny straightens, confident now that he’s back on his home turf. “Absolutely. I don’t know what porn your friend may have given you, but it’s nothing that’s going outside of whatever machine you plug it into.”

“It’s not porn,” Jesse says automatically, though the voyeurism potential makes his cheeks color slightly. Danny looks at him with a raised eyebrow, clearly not believing him. Jesse stiffly thanks him, and walks back to his quarters.

Jesse plugs the stick back in, and now the program opens immediately. He clicks on a few feeds to check the accuracy of labels, seeing Reinhardt in the Blackwatch kitchen and Jack and Gabriel walking down the hallway towards the mess hall. After the labelled areas, there are feeds with strings of letters and numbers that seem to have an order but make no sense to Jesse. He clicks on one, and it shows the inside of an empty office. There’s not enough information to tell whose it is. Offices, conference rooms, even the communal showers outside the training facilities are all there as he taps through them. He finds that he can relabel the feeds, so he names the ones he recognizes. He doesn’t see the few rooms he knows are under blackout - the Overwatch war room, the Blackwatch situation room, the experimental tech area. He’s pretty sure that last one is actually in a giant Faraday cage, and the others have more protections built in than anywhere else in the complex.

He finds the medical facility, and watches Dr Ziegler test out the range of motion on Genji’s recently rebuilt arm for a minute or two. When Genji reaches out his flesh arm to pull Dr Ziegler closer and she holds his face with gentle hands, Jesse taps out of the feed, feeling intrusive on a private moment. The next feed shows an oddly familiar office, but Jesse doesn’t look hard enough to see whose it is before he closes the screen down.

Jesse leans back in his chair, thinking. He should...do something with this. But what? His brain weighs things up, considering and discarding, until he remembers something from the other day. He and Gabriel had grabbed a bottle of rye that someone hadn’t put away and passed it back and forth in the tiny hidden fourth floor lounge they’d commandeered for themselves when Jesse was promoted to second in command a few years back. Gabriel had downed more than usual, and when Jesse had gently prodded at why, he sighed.

“It looks like we have some information leaks,” he’d said quietly, looking out the windows onto the hills surrounding the building. “Jack and I have been trying to figure out where it’s coming from. We’re not sure if it’s an actual mole, or just inherent flaws in the system.” 

“You’re talkin’ Venice.”

“Amongst other things. Not just the media, but certain players having information they shouldn’t.” 

Jesse had tilted the bottle in his hands, watching the reflections shine on his hands and Gabriel’s knee. The aftermath of Venice was bad, a covert mission that had been broadcast to the world. It hit him and Gabriel the worst: Moira rarely went on missions outside of the facility and Genji’s condition meant that he would never be able to pass as a typical citizen. But Jesse and Gabriel? They went undercover all the time, they needed to be anonymous. Jesse was just happy his hat had blocked his face for most of the pictures. He’d given what reassurances he could, and let Gabriel lean on his shoulder on their stumbling way back to quarters.

The information leaks. That’s something having surveillance system access could help with. He could see if anyone was acting odd, having meetings or calls when they shouldn’t, look for strange people or strange tech. He would have to thank Sombra - this could be more than equal payment for just a name.

Jesse turns his computer screen back on, and nearly jumps out of his seat to see Gabriel staring back at him. No, wait - he’s staring at the ceiling, which must be close to where the camera is located. The unnamed feed he clicked to is Gabriel’s office: he recognizes it as he looks closely. Jesse lets himself watch Gabriel, able to look his fill without fear of being caught. He’s leaning back in his chair, arms folded behind his head with one leg crossed over the other. There’s a scrolling feed of information going past on the desk screen in front of him, but Gabriel seems to be lost in his own thoughts, a slight frown on his face. 

A tablet on the desk flashes and Gabriel straightens and taps it. Jesse startles to hear Jack’s voice - he didn’t realize there would be audio here. 

“Have you finished with the budget reports from Antigua?” Jack’s gravelly voice asks, not bothering with a greeting. Gabriel leans over and brings a spreadsheet up on the projected screen, typing something and then flicking it away with a gesture.

“Just sent it to you.”

A pause, presumably Jack pulling it up. “Good. What’s this line item that’s marked ‘explosives’?”

“McCree had to get det cord from a local supplier, the room that we set off the charges in wasn’t the one we thought it was and Torb didn’t anticipate us needing an extra hundred feet of line.”

“Mmm. Speaking of which, go get your boy and meet Ana and I in the war room at 2100. We need to plan how we’re going to approach the meeting in Monaco. I think we’ll each head up a separate team.”

“It’s his day off, I’m not sure if he’s on base.”

“Then get him back. Order him around like you know you want to.” 

Gabriel grins at nothing in particular, ends the call with a chuckle and a genial “Fuck off, Jackie.” He grabs his tablet, taps something out rapidly before setting it back down. Jesse’s own tablet buzzes on the table next to him, and he glances over to see a message from Gabriel asking if he’s around.

He doesn’t answer, needing to take a minute to himself. This is...weird. It’s spying, eavesdropping. They’re his coworkers, technically, but Gabriel and Jack have also been friends for decades and Jesse feels uncomfortable at having listened in on their private conversation. He’s also feeling strange at being called Gabriel’s ‘boy’, though it’s not exactly a...bad feeling. Just strange. He’s deliberately not thinking about Gabriel being told to  _ order him around like you want to, _ chalking it up to an inside joke that he doesn’t want to know the details of.

While Jesse is thinking he’s watching the screen with half an eye. Gabriel is typing, glancing over at the tablet every so often. Jesse gets up to use the restroom, and when he gets back he sees his tablet buzzing and flashing. He taps to accept the call as he sits down, and immediately Gabriel’s voice is coming out of both his tablet and computer. 

“Hey, are you on base right now?” 

Jesse fumbles the tablet, moving to his desk and frantically turning down the volume on the computer before Gabriel can hear anything weird. “Yeah, sorry. Saw you texted.”

Gabriel is frowning on his computer screen. It is supremely strange to see Gabriel halfway across the building as he’s talking to Jesse. “Are you all right? You sound odd.”

“I’m fine. Just havin’ an off day.”

Gabriel is standing on the screen, unzipping his hoodie and draping it across the back of his chair. He pulls a drawer open, takes what looks like clothing out. “Anything I can help with?”

“No, no. Have a friend with a problem, just been trying to help her out,” he fibs. On screen Gabriel is taking off his shirt, and Jesse audibly chokes. He really didn’t need to see Gabriel stripping down when on the phone with him. 

Gabriel has paused in putting on what Jesse recognizes as one of his workout shirts, tilting his head towards the speaker. “No really, are you okay? You getting sick?”

“I’m fine, I swear. Just tired.” Gabriel pulls on the shirt, toes off his shoes, and proceeds to unzip his pants. Jesse turns away, uncomfortable. Their whole team has seen each other in every state of undress, but this is different, this is Gabriel alone in his office with the expectation of privacy. He’s seen Gabriel half and fully naked, covered in ash and blood and sweat. That was all in the field, though. There’s no privacy in foxholes.

“Jack wants to see us at 2100, start planning for the mission in Monaco. War room.”

“No problem. Anything else?”

“No. See you this evening.” The call ends, and Jesse waits before chancing a look over at the screen. Nope, nope, nope, that’s Gabriel in a goddamn jock strap, which is something Jesse never needed to see in full color. Jesse tells himself to shut it down, tells himself to look away. Instead he watches the muscles move in Gabriel’s thighs as he adjusts himself, watches the curve of his ass as he bends down to pull on compression shorts and then track pants. He tugs on a hoodie with the sleeves ripped off, smooths his knit hat down, and disappears from the screen. 

Jesse exhales heavily, he apparently stopped breathing at some point. Jesse McCree is in Blackwatch for a reason - he is not a good person. He’s better than he was, but he has a streak of amorality that lets him do the difficult things that his job requires of him. He’s never let that lack of scruples filter into his professionalism before, having treated his time in Blackwatch as a kind of atonement. He’s the farthest thing from a saint, and having power like this…

He’s not strong enough to handle it responsibly.

What he should do is go right to Gabriel, tell him what he has, propose using it to help with the leaks. Instead Jesse copies the program to a spare memory stick, tucking it into a hollow book that holds some items he’s rather kept hidden. He then puts the first stick into a drawer on his desk, where it blends in to the general debris there. All he wants to do is go and get drunk, but he has a meeting in three hours with goddamn everyone.

The meeting goes fine, though Jesse is quieter than usual and Gabriel keeps shooting him looks that range from annoyed to concerned. The moment everything wraps up, Jesse knocks on Genji’s door and they head into town to hit the first bar they can find.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next morning Jesse has a hangover the size of Montana. He’s sitting at the table in the kitchen listlessly poking at his eggs when a large mug of coffee appears beside him. He looks up to see Gabriel frowning down at him.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but get your shit together, McCree. You’re training the new kids on target optimization in an hour in training room two.”

Jesse sighs and drains half the mug in one go. He’d nearly forgotten about that, but he sees it right there on his calendar when he pulls out his tablet. He shoves as much of the eggs down his throat as he can stand before going back to his quarters for a shower. Jesse drinks a lot but rarely gets drunk. Feeling like this is why he avoids it. 

As the hangover eases his day improves. The recruits don’t do too badly, Reinhardt makes some truly excellent sausages for lunch, his afternoon training sessions go well, and he figures out the team he’s going to take to Monaco. They’re going to have an early meeting with Jack and Ana about it tomorrow morning, so Jesse decides to call it an early night.

He leans back in bed onto his pillows, trying to get interested in the book on his tablet, but his mind keeps drifting. Giving in to the inevitable, he grabs the memory stick out of his desk and plugs it into his tablet. It works here as well as the computer, though he can feel the piece of technology heat up a bit with the program pushing the system.

It’s not that late, only around ten, and Jesse amuses himself by tapping around and seeing what everyone is doing at this time of night. Dr Ziegler is filling out reports in her office, Ana is handwriting a letter that’s likely to her daughter, Torbjörn is working away at something down in engineering, Genji is in the main Blackwatch lounge meditating. There’s something deliciously thrilling about it, watching people go about the most normal tasks when they don’t know they are being observed.

Jesse likes knowing things. He just does. It’s not that he feels the need to use the information for good or bad, he just wants to know it. Given the chance he’ll go through people’s wallets to see how they’re organized, poke through closets and rooms and bookshelves in people’s homes to see how they lay things out when it’s just for them. He is fascinated by how people organize parts of their life that aren’t meant to be seen by others, that aren’t performative. He’s learned so well while being an agent how much of who you think you are is really for others - how you dress, how you walk and talk, how you wear your hair, it’s all really not about  _ you, _ it’s about how you’re presenting yourself to the world.

Realizing this and getting a handle on what can be altered to present oneself as a different person has made Jesse an excellent undercover agent. It also lets him poke through people’s lives as a legitimate part of his job, so he calls it a win-win.

He watches Torbjörn rub where his prosthetic arm begins, watches Genji trip over the pillow he had been kneeling on, watches Ana trace over the tattoo under her eye with unconscious practiced movements. Those little moments are what keeps Jesse from shutting the program down - the stumblings through life that are hidden from the world at large. He taps twice, finds himself on a feed he shouldn’t be on. He should delete the label, give it a string of numbers so he can’t locate it again.

Instead, Jesse lies back in bed and watches Gabriel in his office.

He’s not doing much, just hunched over his desk and typing away. Jesse frowns, if that’s his usual position no wonder he’s mentioned his back is tight lately. Gabriel types into his tablet every once in a while, after one time he does it Jesse’s own tablet vibrates with a message reminding him of their meeting the next morning. Out of a perverse need to see what he does, Jesse responds with _‘_ _ ok see you then, have a good night’ _ . Gabriel smiles a bit when he gets it, types back  _ ‘Get sleep, you need it’ _ before setting the tablet aside. 

Gabriel smiled. At a message from Jesse. Okay.

Last night’s activities are catching up with him, so Jesse shuts the program down, leaving Gabriel to keep working into the night. He drifts off to sleep and dreams of an endless stream of messages cascading down his bedroom walls.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A week later, Jesse is frustrated. He’s learned the system fairly well - knows what most of the feeds are, relabeled just about everything, can set a particular feed to record if wanted, and figured out how to recall footage for 48 hours previous. He’s poked around the darkest of hallways and the most hidden rooms, checked in on the people he trusts least in Overwatch and Blackwatch, and it’s all resulted in nothing. How do you figure out where information is leaking from when it’s so slow and general?

He also found out something very interesting, after running into one of Danny’s assistants at the bar getting tipsy. Some of the areas that he has access to - medical, admin offices, the tech area itself - on his version of the surveillance system aren’t available to the tech people that do the official surveillance monitoring. After asking some delicate questions, he figures out that Sombra must somehow have tied the program to the AI programs, which have access everywhere. 

After the usual communal Blackwatch Thursday night dinner, Jesse catches Gabriel on his way out of the kitchen.

“Hey, could we talk about something? Privately?”

Several expressions flash over Gabriel’s face, too fast to catch, but it settles on lowered brows and eyes that look intently at Jesse’s face. “Upstairs lounge?”

The lounge is on the general surveillance system and, more importantly, doesn’t have a lock. “Your office?” suggests Jesse.

“Is eleven too late?”

“No. Sounds good.”

A few hours later, Jesse is knocking on Gabriel’s office door. Entering, it’s odd to see everything from this angle - they don’t often meet here and this is the first time he’s been here in person since he started watching it through the surveillance system. Jesse sits on the sinfully comfortable couch, Gabriel pulling his chair around to sit across from him.

“I’ve been thinking,” Jesse begins, “About the information leaks. This is...these are our jobs, Gabriel, our lives. An’ you know that it’s you and I that are getting hit worst by it. I don’t want to be unable to do missions, to not be able to show my face. So I think we should start our own investigation. I’m sure Jack means well, but this sneaky shit is what we do professionally.”

Gabriel leans back in his chair, hands linked behind his head in a pose familiar to Jesse from having watched it so many times. The angle from here is much better though, Gabriel’s biceps bulging under his sweatshirt as the fabric stretches tightly across his chest. His face is thoughtful.

“I won’t say that I haven’t been feeling the same way. Jack is...he’s well-intentioned, but he’s going about this expecting that the other side is going to be playing by the rules, and we both know that’s not true. How would you want to go about this?”

Jesse mentally breathes a sigh of relief. “Well, what do you have so far?”

Going over to his desk, Gabriel presses a finger to a biometrically-sealed drawer and pulls out a paper file. At Jesse’s raised eyebrow, he raises one right back. “You can’t hack paper.” He has a point.

Gabriel sits next to Jesse on the couch, his thigh a line of heat pressed to Jesse’s own. The file is spread across their laps, Gabriel’s harsh handwriting covering front and back of the papers. Jesse takes one and finds himself reading about Walker and her penchant for gambling, then about Bilaver and his mistress in Germany. There’s page after page detailing the weaknesses of everyone in Blackwatch, and there’s headway made on Overwatch as well. Jack’s elegant writing shows up occasionally in bits that are literally cut and glued in, the comments about the agents more kind.

“This is...remarkably paranoid, Gabriel.” Jesse flips through the pages, tabulates the names against the roster in his head. “I’m not in here.”

Gabriel shrugs, eyes on the papers before them. “I trust you.” Jesse bites the inside of his lip, can feel his face heat. 

Jesse turns his attention back to the list. “Is there anyone that stuck out as being dissatisfied with the group, or particularly susceptible to manipulation?”

Gabriel points out a few names, and Jesse asks for a piece of paper and pen so he can start writing down his own notes. Jesse shares his thoughts on who had stuck out in his own mind as untrustworthy, and is pleased to see that many of the names match up. After an hour or so Jesse has a list of agents and their sins.

“So what now?” asks Gabriel curiously. Jesse was the one to come to him with this, Jesse should be the one with the plan.

Jesse chews on the inside of his cheek, debating. He should tell Gabriel. He should. 

He doesn’t.

“I have...some investigation methods I was going to test out. Nothin’ dangerous, nothin’ involving direct contact. Stop givin’ me the angry eyebrows.”

Gabriel’s still frowning, but he’s organizing the papers to put the file away calmly. “This needs to be quiet, Jesse. And not what you like to say is quiet but is really just you charming yourself out of trouble - if whoever is doing this figures out we’re investigating them…”

“I know, Gabriel, I know. Just...trust me on this.”

Gabriel finishes gathering the file up, warm fingers brushing Jesse’s thighs where the folder had been sitting. He puts it back in the locked cabinet, and Jesse stands to leave.

“Jesse.” He pauses with a hand on the door handle. “Let’s check back in a week. Will that give you enough time?”

“Yeah. Let me try some things out, see what I can find.”

Gabriel nods, and sits back behind his desk as Jesse slips out.

It’s almost one in the morning by the time Jesse gets back to his room, and after a perfunctory shower and teeth brushing, he’s in bed and setting his alarm for far too early the next morning. Out of habit he opens up the surveillance program, but pauses as he doesn’t really need to look anyone up. His fingers are moving without input from his brain, however, and he’s tapping on the label DONTOPENDAMNIT before he knows it.

The screen is showing a sight he left all of twenty minutes before. Gabriel is in the same position he was when Jesse left him, behind the desk with his chin in one hand and a pen in the other, scratching lightly over paper. As the clock in the corner of Jesse’s screen flips over to one am, Athena’s voice says over the tablet’s speakers, “Commander Reyes, a reminder that you have a meeting at 0600 with Commander Morrison.”

Gabriel stretches, sighs, and scratches at his side for a moment. “Thanks, Athena.” Instead of gathering his things to leave, he opens a cabinet door that Jesse had never noticed that’s flush with the wall. The angle is bad, but he can see what looks like clothing hung up inside. Gabriel pulls off his hoodie and drapes it on his chair, and toes out of his shoes. He pulls a pillow and blanket out of the cabinet and tosses them on the couch. He takes off his pants, folding them and shoving them in the cabinet before shutting the doors. 

Walking in his underwear and t-shirt to the couch, Gabriel collapses onto it and tugs the blanket over him. “Athena, lights.” The room goes dark. “Set alarm for 0500.” 

“Acknowledged, Commander Reyes.”

Jesse frowns, staring at a black screen. It’s one thing to know Gabriel is a workaholic, it’s another to know he’ll be getting only four hours of sleep because of Jesse. As Gabriel’s light snores filter through the speakers, Jesse shuts down the program, a thought starting to germinate in the back of his brain. Maybe...maybe the program could be used for some good, as well as for investigation.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse monitors the surveillance system just about every minute he’s not training, eating, sleeping, or on a mission. He keeps an eye on the half dozen agents that he and Gabriel had tagged as most suspicious, watching them at meals and during training, sees them sneak smokes outside and jack off in the communal showers. No one has made any kind of move yet, though Jesse takes endless notes and tries to establish their regular routines.

He also keeps an eye out to see how his friends are doing, sees what he can do for them, so he can at least do some active good. After seeing Ana rub her forehead all day he makes her tea when he gets himself coffee, setting it down next to her on his way out with a startled  _ thank you Jesse  _ delivered to his back. He notices Genji unconsciously favoring his right knee off and on, quietly points it out to him during a workout later that night. He tests out the recall feature by tracking Torbjörn back until he finds the hammer he dropped in between couch cushions. Little things, but ones he wouldn’t be aware of if he wasn’t seeing the largest of pictures.

Then, of course, there’s Gabriel. The man rarely sleeps, barely eats enough calories to keep his massive body going, and has a tablet seemingly surgically attached to one hand and a shotgun to the other. He’s able to push himself as much as he does because of SEP picking up the slack, but Jesse sees the bruised flesh under his eyes, sees the gallons of coffee he drinks, sees the tight pull of his mouth. It’s nothing that can be fixed with a cup of tea or a beer after work, and Jesse feels helpless. The more he watches, the more he cares. He’s always cared about Gabriel, but this is something - different.

Jesse’s gotten into the particularly bad habit of leaving the system on Gabriel’s office when he’s working on things late at night and transcribing notes on his suspects. It’s like having someone occupied while next to you but ignoring you - the comforting sounds of keys clicking, pens scratching, and the occasional cleared throat providing a soothing background to work. 

He knows he shouldn’t. He still does it.

It’s just past ten on Friday night, and Jesse is compiling everything together to meet with Gabriel the next day. Jesse’s just about ready to shut off the surveillance system - Gabriel has been twitchy and snappish all day, to the point where Ana snatched his mug of coffee away earlier, and it’s not any better alone in his office. Jesse is just reaching over to the tablet when Gabriel’s voice growls out.

“Athena, suspend all calls and communications except for those on the approved emergency list for the next hour.”

“Acknowledged, Commander Reyes.”

Jesse sits back, confused. He first wonders who’s on the emergency list. Jack, of course. Ana. Dr Ziegler. Him? Probably not. Why is Gabriel doing that, anyways? He’s watching the screen with half an eye, but Gabriel isn’t doing anything unusual, just holding his tablet with one hand and flicking through pages with the other. It’s not projecting, so Jesse can’t tell what he’s looking at. 

His attention wanders, and Jesse goes back to writing down observations in his barely-readable handwriting. He doesn’t look up when he hears the beep of the biometric drawer, but he does at an unexpected but familiar sound. Jesse glances up to see Gabriel finishing pulling the zipper on his pants down, and looks back down at his notes to let the man change his clothes in privacy. He doesn’t hear the expected rustle of clothing, though, and when he looks up again his jaw drops open.

Gabriel has his pants open and pushed halfway down his thighs, and is rubbing leisurely over the bulge in the front of his snug black underwear. Jesse remains frozen until Gabriel tilts his head back, eyes closing and a barely-audible sigh coming out of his mouth. Jesse reaches out and slams the tablet screen face down on his desk. 

This is...not okay. He’s spying on the man illegally already and now he’s interfering on the most private of private times, to the point where Gabriel thinks he’s unreachable bar emergencies. Not to mention, he respects Gabriel, trusts and admires and looks up to him as a commander and friend. He needs to shut this down now.

Jesse lifts the tablet up to its previous position so he can hit the power button, but somehow his hand stops in mid air. Gabriel is slouched down in his chair, large hand wrapped around a frankly beautiful dick. He’s long and cut, curving thickly towards his belly and going off to the left just a bit when Gabriel lets himself go. The skin there is darker than the rest of his body, though it lightens slightly to a flushed red at the head that pops in and out of his hand as he strokes. He swipes an easy thumb over the tip every once in a while, spreading the shine of precome that’s almost too fine of detail for Jesse to see leaking out. 

Gabriel reaches over to the bottle sitting on the desk next to him, drizzles a bit of lube in his palm before taking himself in hand again. The noises coming from the otherwise dead silent room are just this side of obscene, slick flesh sliding against itself with a background of quiet pants. Jesse wants to tear his gaze away but he can’t, and he feels himself stiffening in his pants as he watches. This is a part of Gabriel Reyes that he’s never known, that he shouldn’t ever know, and he can’t fucking look away. 

It’s the look on Gabriel’s face more than anything else that gets him - his head is still thrown back against the back of the chair, and finally, finally his face has smoothed out of its tense lines. Gabriel’s mouth is parted just a bit, and Jesse makes a quiet involuntary noise as a pink tongue swipes along his bottom lip. His forehead is now wrinkled slightly, and his brows lower more in contrast to the relaxation on the rest of his face as the sound of his hand speeds up. 

Time halts for a minute as Gabriel’s hand stops and his throat works silently, before he’s jerkily pulling his shirt up so he can come in long white ropes onto his chest. There’s a soft choked gasp but his orgasm is otherwise soundless, hand tight around his pulsing cock and face tensing before relaxing into the afterglow. Jesse is frozen, afraid of moving and feeling how hard he is, afraid that somehow Gabriel will know he’s being watched, afraid oh god somehow Gabriel will  _ know. _

He doesn’t seem to be aware of anything unusual at all, though, his lube-slick hand falling away to hang at his side as the other idly rubs a bit of semen on his chest into his skin like lotion. Jesse takes a deep, shaking breath. This is fine. Everything is fine. Everything is...why is his hand moving towards the menu button? Goddamnit Jesse McCree, what are you  _ doing? _

Jesse’s higher functions are apparently not listening to him today, because something deeper in him that wants to push this as far as it will go is hitting the first speed dial button. By far the most likely scenario is that it will go to voicemail because Athena is blocking all calls not on Gabriel’s emergency list.

Gabriel’s tablet starts vibrating.

_ Fuck, _ Jesse thinks.

“Fuck,” says Gabriel, mild annoyance clear. He leans over to check who’s calling. “Fuck,” he says again, but this time Jesse can’t identify the tone. It’s not annoyance, it’s...something else that Jesse isn’t familiar with in Gabriel’s voice. Gabriel sighs, closes his eyes for a moment, and absently licks the come off of his finger. Jesse’s eyes widen almost painfully, and his traitorous dick gives a twitch.

“Jesse?” Gabriel has tapped to accept the call.

“Hey, boss. Was wondering if eight would be good to meet up tomorrow to talk about my...research.” Jesse is more proud of himself for his casually steady voice right now than he was the day he made Gabriel’s strike team.

“Want to make it seven, in town? We can grab dinner, stay away from prying ears.”

“Sounds great.” Fantastic, even, because it means Jesse won’t be trapped in a room staring at Gabriel in that chair and knowing what he did there not 24 hours earlier.

“Okay. See you at training tomorrow.”

“Night. Get some sleep, boss.”

Gabriel hangs up without saying anything, but there’s a faint smile on his face. Jesse watches as he lazily wipes himself off with a few tissues, puts the bottle of lube -  _ god it’s less than half full  _ \- back in his desk drawer, and pulls his pants up. Gabriel doesn’t zip himself up, though, and something about him putting his files away in preparation to go home while his soft underwear-covered cock hangs out of his pants is hitting Jesse almost harder than watching Gabriel orgasm did.

Jesus Christ. There is no way this ends well.

Jesse shuts down the screen, and sits there with a hand over his eyes for a minute before getting up and moving stiffly to the bathroom. This calls for a shower. A cold one. Jesse turns the water on, letting it warm up just enough so he doesn’t freeze then steps in. Still, all it takes is the gentle pressure of water on his dick for him to be gasping and coming, fingers uselessly clawing at the wet walls as white streaks the grey tile.

When Jesse steps out of the shower ten minutes later, he’s clean and his lips are nearly purple. He gets into bed, huddling under the covers. This will be fine. All he has to do is look his commander in the face and not imagine what it would be like to get him to make that relaxed face again. Possibly involving a scenario with Jesse on his knees. 

Jesse punches his pillow into shape and firmly closes his eyes, repeating Portuguese verb conjugations to himself until he drops off to sleep.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse gets a text from Gabriel at six thirty that evening saying to go on ahead to the Summit, he’d be a little late thanks to a meeting with someone at the International Justice Commission. Jesse heads into town, folders tucked into a battered leather bag, and heads into the bar. The Summit isn’t that popular with the Overwatch group - not fancy enough or with good enough food to make it memorable. Gabriel’s team likes it though, and they’ve become regulars over the years. Jesse nods to the hostess, who waves him off to sit at their usual table.

Jesse’s munching on the basket of bread and making his way through his second bourbon when he looks up from his tablet to find Gabriel sliding into the seat opposite him dressed in a suit and tie. Jesse looks up and catches the bartender’s eye, and less than a minute later she’s bringing Gabriel his neat single malt and more of the surprisingly delicious dark brown bread for Jesse.

Gabriel eyes him as he tears into the bread. “You realize how much training you’re going to have to do to work all that off, right?”

“I’m young, my metabolism hasn’t abandoned me yet.” Jesse butters a warm slice, holds it out to Gabriel. “Eat. Pretty sure you could cut the loaf with your cheekbones at this point.” Gabriel rolls his eyes but takes it, Jesse watching until he bites in. 

After the plates have been cleared away from their meal and Gabriel is done glaring around the room to make sure they’re not being observed, Jesse pulls the files out of his bag. Gabriel moves over until he’s next to Jesse so he can see, and Jesse tells himself that it’s not awkward at all. He spreads the notes out, organized neatly despite his abysmal penmanship. 

“I’ve been trackin’ Bilaver, Obote, Walker, Yoon, Chazan, and Ishii. I started -”

“Why are you looking at Yoon? He’s a good agent.”

“Not Blackwatch Yoon, Overwatch Yoon. Yoon Seul. She has family ties to some nasty gangs back home.”

“You of all people shouldn’t be judging that too harshly.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sendin’ all my money home and then disappearin’ for a day every time there’s a mission anywhere near South Korea. Also she has a pretty bad coke habit, her supervisors have already noticed it affectin’ her performance.”

Jesse goes on to talk about the six agents he’s been examining, their daily habits and transgressions, the mundane and the unusual. “It’s not a sure thing, but I honestly think we can discard Walker, Yoon, Obote, and Chazan.”

“Even with how Walker’s in deep with so many bookies?”

“It’s deep for him, but it’s not big boy money and he’s stayin’ afloat with his pay. I don’t think he’s desperate enough. Not to mention he’d be able to pay off his debts if he was getting money for this.”

“All right.” Gabriel sets the sheets covering Bilaver and Ishii in front of him. “So what is it about these two?”

“They just…” Jesse shakes his head. “At first it was just instinct. Not gonna pretend I ever liked either of them, you know that.”

Gabriel nods, shrugs. Jesse is always professional with agents outside of his team - Gabriel’s team alone gets the pleasure of dealing with his offbeat humor and flirting that comes as easy as breathing - but Gabriel knew there were people that Jesse preferred not to work with for whatever reason. 

“Bilaver is...too easily duplicitous. It says in your own report that it took a lot to figure out he had this whole other family hidden away in Berlin in addition to his wife and kids in Croatia, he hid it all just that well. He has marks here and there on his record that aren’t much on their own, but added up...I don’t know. He has a childhood friend that’s a proven Talon agent, and friends in anti-omnic movements. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that he’s shown tendencies towards that himself. And watchin’ him all week...he’s slick. Pulls little things over on people just for his own amusement.”

“And Ishii?”

“She’s a stone killer,” Jesse says flatly. “We all have blood on our hands, but she  _ enjoys _ the kills and likes makin’ them hurt. I know she’s talented, that’s why she got picked up for us, but goin’ back through her history is bad bedtime reading. She killed her first man on her uncle’s orders at age eleven, and hasn’t stopped since. I know she has loyalty, but it ain’t to us. To her family, maybe, or an employer, but I don’t trust her farther than I can throw her.”

“Hmm.” Gabriel flips through, brow drawing down as he puzzles out the occasional sloppily-written word. “I don’t disagree with your assessment, though we should keep an open mind for the moment. General tracking on all, detail work on these two.” He gathers the papers together and slips the file in his briefcase. Looking at Jesse carefully, Gabriel cocks his head. “Going to share your surveillance methods?”

Jesse looks away. He’ll likely have to explain eventually, but it doesn’t have to be now. “It’s something...new. It’s working and they don’t know I’m watching, that’s all that matters.”

Gabriel is still looking intently at him, and Jesse feels more and more like he’s under a beam of light that’s coming into focus. Gabriel finally sits back and tosses back the last of his drink, Jesse breathing an internal sigh of relief. 

“Let’s get out of here. You need a ride?”

“Yeah, appreciate it.”

They drive back in the car Gabriel had used for their meeting, Gabriel taking the hairpin turns up to base too fast but with perfect precision. He drives like he does everything else, just a bit too intense but a beauty to behold. 

“You do anything interesting last night?” Gabriel asks as he whips around a corner so tight Jesse can practically taste the guard rail.

“No, just working on this and that.”  _ And getting off on watching you masturbate like my own personal porn channel _ , Jesse says silently to himself. “You?”

“Just paperwork all night.” 

_ Liar. _ “You’re working too much. Honestly, boss. You’re not takin’ care of yourself. Try sleep sometime, I hear it’s good for you.”

“I’ll sleep when the work’s done.”

Jesse sighs. “I know your supersoldier shit keeps you going, but you’re goin’ to hit the point where it doesn’t anymore and it’ll come down on all our heads. Try food and rest instead of caffeine, for once. Maybe some relaxation. Please?”

Gabriel grumbles as he pulls into the garage. “You sound like Ana. And my mother.”

“Far be it for me to argue with such wise women.”

“Suck up. I’ll get some sleep, okay?”

“I’ll know if you don’t.”

“Start surveilling me and we will have  _ words _ , Jesse McCree.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

It’s a week and a half later, and Jesse has been up for….three days straight? Four? Something like that. He was on a stakeout with Genji that went wrong in the first half hour, leaving them to hole up in a building crawling with Talon agents for days. Genji had a mechanism in his hip absolutely pulverized, leaving him sidelined with Jesse picking up the slack. The worst part was that it wasn’t even a Blackwatch mission - Jack had asked them to do it as it was an area of Japan that Genji was familiar with from his youth.

Jesse is finally in his rooms, peeling pieces of armor off one by one, when he gets a call from Gabriel. 

“Can you stop by my office? I’d like to go over what you’ve found. Research-wise.”

Normally Jesse would be all over some one on one time with Gabriel, but not after 72 hours without sleep, food, or changing clothes. 

“Yeah, sure. Just give me a few, I really gotta shower first.”

“Sure, sure. Whenever you get here.”

Jesse nearly nods off against the side of the shower, halfheartedly drying his hair with a towel and dressing in sweats when he gets out. He grabs his files and makes his way to the other side of the base.

Gabriel’s eyes widen when Jesse comes in and shuts the door. “What the hell, Jesse. You look like death.”

“Aw thanks, Gabriel. You know how to make a boy feel pretty.”

“I know I haven’t been around for a few days, but what in God’s name were you doing?”

“Didn’t Jack tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“He’s had Genji and me in Japan for the past few days, stakin’ out this medical facility they think is tryin’ to...god, I don’t even remember at this point. Elevate omnic consciousness or some shit. Genji’s in...y’know, he might not be in medical, he might just be in Torb’s lab. Somethin’ got seriously jacked up in his hip but I don’t know if it’s just mechanical or not.”

Gabriel is glowering. “When was the last time you slept?”

“It’s...been a few days.”

“You need to go back to quarters and get rest, Jesse. This can wait.”

“No. I’m here now, may as well get it over with.” Jesse pulls a sheaf of papers out. “Maybe he’s not the information leak, but Bilaver is dirty as hell and we should get him out of here.”

Gabriel looks through the papers. “So on Sunday he visited someone over in Basel…” he continues talking but it all blurs into a drone in Jesse’s ear. He barely notices himself slipping sideways on the couch, and then he notices nothing at all.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse blinks his eyes. There’s no noticeable difference between them being open and closed. He’s horizontal, but he’s not in bed. Opening his mouth, it takes a few tries to get actual words out. 

“Athena, lights?”

The lights come on, thankfully dimmed. Jesse squints around. He’s in Gabriel’s office, stretched out on the couch. Gabriel is nowhere to be seen. He has a pillow beneath his head and a blanket draped over him, the same ones he’d seen Gabriel use before. He sits up slowly, notices his shoes are tucked away next to the desk. 

“Time?”

“The time is 1600 hours.”

“Day?”

“It is Wednesday.”

It’s the next day. He’s slept for twenty hours. 

“You have been marked down today and tomorrow as being off for personal illness, per Commander Reyes,” the AI continues.

“Thanks, Athena.” Damnit, Gabriel. At least he could use the time to backtrack Bilaver and Ishii, see what they’ve been up to. And he didn’t even get to really talk to Gabriel about what he’s seen over the past week, they’re going to have to have another meeting.

Jesse folds the blanket neatly, sets it and the pillow on the end of the couch. Passing out in the middle of Gabriel talking. Fucking Christ, that’s  _ mortifying. _ Jesse slips into his shoes and out of the room as fast as he can, he feels awkward enough.

After showering and brushing his teeth, Jesse pulls up the surveillance system. His finger hovers over the tab for the hallway outside Bilaver’s quarters, before moving over and clicking on Gabriel’s office. He goes back twenty one hours, and sees Gabriel sitting alone in his office. He fast forwards a bit, and goes back to real time once he enters Gabriel’s office. God, he did look like hell.

Jesse watches himself pass out embarrassingly, eyes rolling up as he slowly tilts back against the couch while Gabriel talks and looks at the files. Gabriel looks up, eyebrows drawing in at the sight. 

“Jesse? Jesse, are you okay? McCree?” Gabriel gets up and sits next to him, shaking him gently then roughly by the shoulders, finally pressing two fingers to the pulse in his neck. After a minute he stands, glaring down at him. Present-day Jesse winces. Gabriel looks  _ mad _ . God, what a fucking thing to do in front of your commander. Hopefully he won’t hold it against him for too long.

Gabriel goes to his desk, projects a screen up. A few taps and Jesse can see the details of the mission he was just on, and both his and Genji’s debriefs. Jesse had written his account on the plane, wanting it done as soon as possible so he could get sleep. It likely had a thousand typos, but at least it was done.

Flicking over another screen, Gabriel hits a speed dial number, waiting with arms crossed as the number rings. Jack’s gruff voice comes through as his image appears on the screen. “What?”

“Want to tell me why I have one agent passed out in my office and another in medical, with an op that you never told me about?” Gabriel snaps out. Jesus. Jesse’s never heard Gabriel this angry without explosions being involved before.

“I needed them for a mission that required their specific abilities and knowledge.”

“And so you stole half my strike team without asking me for days, and put them out of commission for the foreseeable future.” Oh. It’s not Jesse that Gabriel’s mad at.

“They’re grown men, Gabriel, with a startling number of weapons on their persons. It’s not like I forced them.”

“No, they just thought that I okayed it. I know we’re under the same umbrella, Jack, but we are separate goddamn organizations. I don’t bend over for you and you don’t get to co-opt my team whenever you feel like it.”

Jack sighs tiredly. “I checked the schedule, you had nothing going on for the next few days. And this was an ask from the IJC. You should know - you were the one that met with them not even two weeks ago.” They’re talking about the meeting Gabriel had right before he and Jesse had dinner together, Jesse realizes.

Gabriel pauses. “It was connected to the stolen SEP data?”

“Yeah. Genetics lab connected to an omnic manufacturing facility, and as I’m sure you read, they got evidence right away that it was being protected by far more firepower than anyone anticipated.”

Gabriel rubs his forehead. “Okay Jack. I just...I’m down half my team. And no one told me that might happen. You get why I’m angry?”

“I should’ve let you know. I assumed that they would have told you.”

“They don’t question you, Jack. It’s almost like they think that you’re in leadership and would keep everyone informed properly, particularly given that it’s you and me. Jesse just said that he assumed you told me.”

“How’s he doing, by the way? He had to pretty much be a one man protection detail for a few days.”

Gabriel tilts the tablet to show Jesse collapsed on the couch. Current Jesse is turning red at Jack seeing him like that. “Well he passed out literally mid-sentence and won’t wake up, so what does that tell you?”

“That you have him alone and can do whatever you want with him?” There’s an unexpected leering tone in Jack’s voice.

“Not actually funny, Jack. He’s been yelling at me recently about not taking care of myself, and then he goes and this happens.”

Jack is quiet for a moment, thoughtful look on his face. “He’s right. You don’t look great yourself, Gabriel. Maybe try listening to everyone for a night and go get some sleep.”

“You know how much work there is to do. What we’re up against.”

“I do. And I know you need to be sharp for it.” Jack’s voice is as gentle as his rasp can get. “Gabriel, he...cares. About you. Have you thought about talking -”

“No, and I’m not having this conversation with you yet again, especially when he’s five feet away.”

“Gabriel -”

Gabriel shoots Jack a finger and when he rolls his eyes turns it into a gesture that dismisses the call. He shuts the screen down with another wave, and rests his head on a fist, looking over at Jesse in the dim light.

“Now what do I do with you,” he says himself, contemplation and something else that Jesse can’t place in his voice. Gabriel goes to the hidden closet and pulls it open, looking at its contents for a minute before pulling out a pillow and blanket.

Setting the pillow at one end of the couch and the blanket at the other, Gabriel kneels and tugs Jesse’s boots off, setting them aside. He stands and grabs Jesse with his hands under his armpits, pulling him over so his head is on the pillow. “Need to stop eating so much bread, you big lummox,” he grumbles quietly as he hauls Jesse’s legs up onto the other half of the couch. Shaking the blanket out, he drapes it over Jesse, tucking it in around his body. Gabriel stays kneeling for a moment, brushing the hair out of Jesse’s face from where it had fallen over his eyes. 

Standing, Gabriel pulls his briefcase out from under his desk and begins packing it up with files, including the ones that Jesse just brought. “Athena, mark Agent McCree down as being out the next two days with a personal illness. If any alerts come through to the desk in this office, have them be on silent. And send an alert to my tablet as soon as Agent Shimada is released from medical.”

With an order for the lights to be turned off, Gabriel leaves. Jesse fast forwards though hours of blackness that are relieved at seven the next morning. Gabriel opens the door, turns on the lights, and is startled to see Jesse still there. He feels Jesse’s forehead with a careful hand, then checks his pulse again. “Jesse?” he shakes a shoulder gently, but Jesse is still the next best thing to unconscious.

With a shrug, Gabriel sits at his desk and does work - not projected so Jesse can’t tell what it is - for a few hours until he leaves, presumably for lunch. Another few hours of darkness and Jesse sees himself wake up and bring himself up to present day.

That all was certainly...something. There’s something going on in how Jack and Gabriel talk about Jesse, but he can’t quite parse what it is. It’s difficult when people - especially those who have a lot of history - talk one on one: they don’t have to explain things, don’t have to refer to context the way they do when talking with a group. Jesse rolls his knuckles on his desk contemplatively before pulling up his messages. 

_ > hey real sorry about how I passed out on you. thanks for lettin me crash for a bit _

_ < You obviously needed it. How are you feeling? _

_ > better. we really should finish that talk, I have some information on B we should discuss _

_ < I’m headed to Serbia tonight for two days, but after that. Just rest for a bit _

_ > okay but I’m going to Basel tomorrow to check something out. just a quick train ride away, won’t be more than a few hours _

_ < If I hear about a single gunshot or anyone injured at all, I’ll have you training recruits full time for a month _

_ > ill be fine don’t worry _

_ < Message me when you get back on base _

_ > will do _

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse had found Bilaver was making regular trips into Basel, a city just a quick train ride to the northwest from Zürich. If he kept to the schedule he has been, he’d be making another one today. Jesse consciously dresses unlike himself, pulling his hair back and tucking it up under a baseball cap. He wears baggy khakis and battered tennis shoes, an ill-fitting polo and windbreaker helping to disguise his musculature. He looks like a broader-than-average IT guy, and Bilaver doesn’t notice him entering the car behind him and walking past. Jesse fakes a stumble when the train jolts and attaches a tiny tracker dot to the side of Bilaver’s Italian leather shoe.

Bilaver gets off inside the city, makes his way to a hotel. Jesse takes the stairs as he takes the elevator, following him to room 501. He’ll put a bug in after Bilaver leaves, on the off chance that he uses the same room every time. Jesse sets a tiny video-only bug on the wall outside the room, and goes to a coffee shop across the street to monitor. He’ll be able to see who comes in and out. 

Two cups of coffee and a croissant later, Bilaver leaves. Jesse doesn’t follow - he has the tracker on him now. Instead he waits, one eye on his tablet showing the bug’s fisheye view and the other on a writeup of a new target orientation proposal he’s doing for Ana. Jesse’s eyes snap to the tablet screen when he sees the door open, but it only opens a crack before something thin and metal is poking out and then - 

Zzzt. The bug goes dark. Whoever is meeting with Bilaver, they’re certainly more paranoid than he is. 

Jesse goes back to the hotel at as fast of a walk as he can handle without it looking like he’s running. He takes a seat in the lobby, eye on the elevators. One car comes down from the fifth floor, and a man who looks like he could be the bastard offspring of Gabriel and Winston exits, seven feet of muscle, body hair, and anger. Jesse follows him at a distance, watches him buy a train ticket to Frankfurt. He doesn’t go further, he has pictures and DNA from a cigarette butt the target tossed in the gutter. Excellent results for just a few hours work.

He celebrates by finding a bar that’s too nice for his current getup, but after losing the hat, shaking his hair out, and grinning at the hostess from under his eyelashes, he’s seated at the bar with a dark beer.

It’s been awhile, so it’s almost unsurprising to feel the tap of fingernails on his shoulder. 

“Please tell me that you’re dressing that way for a reason,” Sombra murmurs into his ear. 

Jesse turns and smiles. She’s wearing a shirt that’s more of a suggestion than an article of clothing and silver pants that leave nothing to the imagination. He’s sure he looks like he’s picking up an escort right now, but his ego can handle it. 

“Long time no see, was wondering if you’d dropped off the map.”

She gives a careless shrug as she perches on the stool next to him. “Oh, you know how it goes. Help destabilize a republic here, knock out a national bank’s infrastructure there. The usual.” She leans forward slightly, mouth quirking a bit. “Are you enjoying my present?”

Jesse leans forward himself a bit, cocks his head. “Can I ask why you gave that particular present to me? Not that I’m complaining.”

Sombra tosses her hair back, turns the gesture into a lazy wave of her hand. “As much as I like getting paid obscene amounts of money for doing what I do, sometimes I need to entertain myself, to persuade the butterfly to flap its wings.”

“An’ I’m the hurricane that results.”

“Perhaps. Has your ability to see far and wide had any consequences so far?”

Jesse looks at her, her wide guileless purple eyes and her intricately styled hair, every facet of what she’s showing having been carefully crafted for public consumption, the fact that she’s here in Basel. “What do you know, Sombra?”

“Jesse McCree, the total tonnage of what I know that you don’t could stun a herd of oxen in its tracks.”

He rolls his eyes. “Cute.” He leans back on the bar for a moment, considering. “What would you say if I wanted to hire you?”

“I would say that there would be a change in our relationship, perhaps not for the better.” Sombra’s voice has lost some of its purr, becoming more professional. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m assuming I could count on your discretion.”

A laugh, with enough real humor in it to draw male attention from around the room. “If nothing else, Jesse, I am the epitome of discretion.”

This is true, as far as Jesse knows. Although he has heard of some clients that Sombra has worked for, information on what she’s actually done has never come from her. He leans forward, brushing a lock of her hair aside to fix her in both eyes with a serious look. “If I gave you a name, what could you give me?”

“A life. Anything you wanted.”

“And if I want everything about this person.”

“Doable.”

“With no questions asked.”

“I would never.”

“Cost?”

She gives him a wink. “With a deep friends and family discount,” she says low and throaty, then names a number that’s high enough that Jesse cringes to think what it would be like without the discount.

“All right. Payment schedule?”

“Half now and half on delivery. Which would be in a week, if that works for you.”

“It does. Let’s meet...hmm. Vaduz?” suggests Jesse.

“Good neutral territory. You know Bar 14, overlooking the Rhine?”

“I’m familiar.” Jesse pulls out his tablet, opens a blank page and hands it to her. “Account number.” She inputs it, hands it back.

“Name?”

On the line below the account number, Jesse types  _ Mirko Zoran Bilaver _ ,  _ age 25, Croatia _ , and shows it to her. Sombra looks at it carefully, memorizing, before leaning back. Jesse deletes the information. 

Jesse pulls up his calendar, checks his schedule. “Next Friday, a week from tomorrow. 8 pm, Bar 14.”

Sombra slides off of her chair in a smooth movement. Her lips skim over the edge of Jesse’s cheekbone on her way up to whisper into his ear. “It’s a date.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

A few days later, Jesse is sitting crosslegged on the couch alone in Gabriel’s office, Athena having let him in. Gabriel’s running unexpectedly late from his Serbia trip. Jesse got the DNA results back on his mystery man, and nothing popped on anyone’s database. Annoying. He’s focused on writing things up when he hears the door open. 

“Here I thought you mighta stood me up.”

“We ended up bringing some people back, prisoner transport became a thing.” Jesse looks over to Gabriel for the first time, his eyes widening. Gabriel is wearing what had once been a very nice suit, but it and the shirt underneath are stiff with dried blood and sweat. His less-scarred cheek has been split open, a short line of stitches holding the taut skin together. 

“Were they alive or in body bags?”

“Little of both.”

“We can do this later, you look like shit.”

“I’m fine. What have you found?”

Jesse talks about how Ishii is a creepy fuck but she lives a fairly spartan life. Bilaver on the other hand lives to excess, spending more money than Jesse can explain and using its display to screw anything with a pulse.

“I’m not one to judge someone’s sex life, though the dedication it takes to maintain that plus two different families in two different countries is both slimy and admirable. It does all speak a lot to experience and talent in lyin’. What I’m more concerned about is where he’s gettin’ the money to be doing all of this. We’re paid okay but Bilaver is only twenty five and been with us for just three years. He didn’t grow up rich with no conveniently dead wealthy relatives that I can find, so where’s he gettin’ all of it?”

Gabriel cracks his knuckles mindlessly. “Any evidence of the usual cash grabs? Drugs, smuggling, assassinations?”

“Nope, which is why…” Jesse hesitates, knowing this isn’t going to go over well. “Which is why I hired someone I trust to get a deep background on him.”

“What the fuck, Jesse.” Gabriel’s voice is flat as a board.

“I know, but this person is good, one of the best, and we’ve known each other for a while. I trust them.”

“Who is it?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Jesse…”

“You need to trust me on this, Gabriel. They’re paranoid, they won’t get us what we want if they think their identity is being compromised.”

Gabriel sighs, glowering at Jesse as he teases apart the knot of his tie that has hardened with blood. He drops it on his desk, undoing the top few buttons of his shirt and cracking his neck. “I don’t like this. What’s the timeline?”

“I’m meeting them on Friday for the pickup. Lichtenstein.”

“How much did it cost?”

Jesse looks down, intent on picking at a loose thread at the hem of his shirt.

“How. Much.”

Jesse tells him, and Gabriel closes his eyes in consternation. “We can bank it, but you’re the one coming up with the bullshit mission that I can feed to Jack.”

He hadn’t been expecting to get reimbursed at all, so that’s a bonus.

“In return you take backup.”

“Absolutely not. They won’t even show.”

“You don’t -”

“I do, Gabriel. If they get even a  _ hint _ of another person they’ll scatter and I won’t see a single letter of info. I  _ know  _ them. We’ve literally never met when there’s been someone I know within a mile of us, and they do that on purpose.”

Gabriel actually growls as he pushes his chair back, standing to take off his blood-soaked suit jacket. The closely-fitted shirt underneath was once white but is now mostly pink and red drying to brown. The holster straps encircling both his shoulders pull the shirt tight against his broad chest, buttons straining against the stretch. Jesse has to look away before he stares too much.

“Keep your phone on,” Gabriel says finally. “Keep in contact. If I don’t get something from you every hour I’ll send people in.” 

Jesse internally sighs in relief. “Sounds like a plan. Now let me tell you about what I saw in Basel…”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse dresses carefully. The bar is relatively high class, and he wants to stay on Sombra’s good side. He puts on black pants that he rarely wears thanks to their tightness, and a blood red button down. After consideration he keeps his usual belt and buckle, though he puts a black waistcoat on over top. He doesn’t wear the hat, which makes him spend more time on his hair than he usually would. Slipping a blazer on, he tucks his wallet in his pocket and heads to the hangar to check out a car. 

“Jesse,” Ana nods to him as they enter the hallway leading to the Overwatch side of the facility at the same time. 

“Ana. How are you, haven’t seen you around lately.”

“Doing well, though busy, as I’m sure you are as well.” She casts a measuring glance over him. “Date night?”

“Somethin’ like that.”

“If you’re going too far off base, let someone know where you are. I’m sure you’ve heard of the uptick of violence lately.”

“It’s fine, Gabriel knows where I’m headed.”

“...Really, now. And he let you out without a leash?”

Jesse grins at her. “Nearly made me take backup, but I convinced him I’m a big boy.”

Ana coughs, trying unsuccessfully to hide a chuckle. “I’m...sure. Well, have a good evening regardless,” she says as Jesse peels off to go through the double doors to the hangar. 

Jesse debated about taking a train, but the drive from Zürich to Vaduz is only an hour, less with how he drives. He parks along the street, getting to the bar right on time. He sends off a text to Gabriel saying he’s okay, then hands his jacket to the coat check girl and heads to the bar without looking for Sombra. She’ll find him.

As he’s taking a sip from his drink, he feels a familiar hand ghost over his shoulder. “Well, don’t you clean up nice.”

“You’re one to talk, darlin,’” he replies, giving her an appreciative once-over. Sombra’s hair is styled up so the purple is hidden, the electronics missing from the shaved side of her head. She’s wearing something black and slinky with no back, and her heels bring her closer to Jesse’s height.

“When half your time is spent wriggling through air ducts to try and access a building’s power supply, you learn to enjoy being able to dress up to please yourself.”

“I feel like your outfit is pleasing quite a few people other than yourself right now, but I see your point.” Jesse moves closer, trails his fingers over her bare shoulder and down her arm. “So,” he says lowly. “Information exchange?”

“In a bit,” she says. “Let’s enjoy ourselves first.”

They get some light food and more drinks, talking easily about this and that. Sombra is checking her makeup in a small compact when she pauses, peers closer, then sets the compact down deliberately on the table. She hooks a finger in between the buttons of Jesse’s vest and pulls him forward, off of the barstool. One hand slides between his vest and his shirt at the side, while the other threads into his hair and pulls his head down.

“We are being watched. Tell me you didn’t bring someone to this meeting or this knife is meeting your kidney.” Jesse feels a prick of something sharp at his side as Sombra’s warm wine-scented breath flows over his ear.

“I didn’t bring anyone. My boss knows I’m meetin’ someone, sometime today and somewhere in this country but I wouldn’t tell him anything more as I thought you’d spook.”

“Hmph.” The prick at his side retreats and Sombra’s hand moves up his chest, no sign of the knife that was there. “Put your hands on me before you look even more awkward.” At Jesse’s hesitation, Sombra sighs. “I’m not interested in men, Jesse. There’s no virtue here for you to threaten.”

“I generally don’t sleep with women, so I suppose we’re safe from each other,” he mutters, smiling at feeling Sombra shake with amusement where he’s slid his hands around her narrow waist. 

“There is a man. At a table in the shadows to the back to stage right. I cannot see details but his head hasn’t turned from us in quite some time.” 

“Let me take a look.”

Sombra moves them gracefully, but pauses halfway through before continuing. When Jesse moves to look she holds his head in place for a moment with a strong hand. “He’s moving closer. Don’t look.”

She lets go at Jesse’s nod. He rubs small circles into the soft skin of her back as she smooths out the wrinkles in his shirt from where she had been holding it. “So,” he says with a small smile. “Come here often?”

“Only on business,” she replies, then with a quirk of her lips and sharp nails combing through his beard at the side. “And to see friends.”

“So we are still friends, even with our recent....transaction?”

“As long as you pay me, absolutely.”

“Do you want me to get…” Jesse moves to straighten but Sombra tightens her grip on his shoulder. 

“You do recall we were in the middle of being observed?” Jesse’s back tenses.

“Think it’s all right for me to take a look?” Worst case scenario, it’s Bilaver or the man he was meeting. Jesse thought he’d been careful, but perhaps Bilaver had completely outplayed him.

“Carefully,” she says, and Jesse turns and tucks her hair behind her ear as he darts his eyes around the bar. 

Oh. Shit. This is...past a worse case scenario. 

Jesse steps back and pulls his hands away, motioning to the bartender for another drink. Sombra lets go of him, though she stays close. “Are we in any danger?”

“You’re not. I might be.”

“Oh?” 

“It’s my boss I just told you about, who apparently doesn’t trust me.”

“Not a good thing coming from a supervisor.”

“No, no, I don’t really blame him in this case. We were lookin’ at various people before focusing on the name I gave you, and I wouldn’t tell him how I was doing the surveillance or where my resources came from. And then wouldn’t tell him who I was meeting. He trusts me, but I think I might have stretched it too far.”

“You know the solution, of course,” Sombra says as she plucks Jesse’s drink from his hand to take a sip. “Don’t trust anyone and be your own boss.”

Jesse rolls his eyes. “Not really an option for me, thanks.”

Sombra slips an arm around his back, playing with the strap at the back of the vest. Her face is tilted up to Jesse, but her half-lidded eyes are focused somewhere behind his shoulder. 

“Hmm.” There's a thoughtful note in her voice that’s making Jesse nervous. “Help me up onto the stool.”

Jesse wraps his hands around her waist and easily sets her on one of the tall stools. When he goes to move away Sombra murmurs, “Keep them there.” She pulls Jesse close, and with the height gained by the chair she’s very near his face.

“I thought you didn’t like men,” he says quietly.

“I don’t. I do like fucking with people, though,” and she tugs him a few inches forward into a deep kiss. 

Jesse kisses back, but it’s more reflex than anything. Sombra is an attractive woman but Jesse’s pretty firmly on the male-oriented side of things these days, though there’s always a chance that might change. For all the subtle showmanship that Sombra is putting into things, the kiss from his perspective is amusingly chaste, dry with tongues staying firmly behind their owners’ teeth. 

Pulling back, Jesse starts: “Sombra. I don’t know why -”

“He may be your boss but he’s looking at us like a jealous ex. Who is getting more and more frustrated.” She wipes a smear of lipstick from his lip with a smug finger. 

“It’s - it’s not like that.”

“Oh so you look like someone kicked your puppy when you talk about breaking just anyone’s trust? Because it’s obvious you need his approval.”

Jesse’s fingers tighten on her waist, but he can’t say that she’s wrong.

“I’m just hoping you used the system in the appropriately inappropriate manner I would expect of you.”

A laugh is startled out of Jesse, genuine and loud. “I’m tryin’ to be a good person with it, Sombra. Don’t make it harder than it is.”

She smiles, eyes flicking past Jesse’s shoulder before moving back to pull her tablet out of her purse. She hands it to Jesse, and with a few taps he’s transferred the rest of her fee. He fishes his own from his back pocket and takes vindictive pleasure in sending a check-in message to Gabriel, knowing he’s just yards away:  _ all fine, no need for backup, headed back soon. _

“Let me know if there’s anything else you need,” Sombra says as she pulls a memory stick out and tucks it into the pocket on his waistcoat. She pulls him close to brush her lips against his, then leans forward to whisper in his ear. “Reyes was far more angry that I made you laugh than when we kissed. Think on that.”

At Jesse’s raised eyebrow when she pulls back, she smirks. “What, you think I don’t know what every major player in Overwatch looks like? Come now, Jessito.”

Jesse shakes his head, smiling a bit. “It’s just not like that with him.”

Cool fingers touch his cheek. “Foolish boy. Why not?” She’s gone a moment later in a rustle of expensive fabric and the fading warmth of a hand on his arm. Jesse finishes his drink, and on his stroll towards the coat check he glances around the bar. Gabriel is nowhere to be seen.

The drive back is just long enough to give Jesse too much time to think. He’s filled with a mixture of anger and fondness at Gabriel following him. Gabriel doesn’t trust him, but Gabriel cares about him. Cares about him enough to apparently get upset at the idea of him and Sombra together. Which is...something Jesse doesn’t want to think too hard about. He’s been trying so hard to keep his feelings for Gabriel locked down, the last thing he needs is false hope to get them back up again. 

Back in his quarters, Jesse turns the stick over in his hands. He should open it up. It’s getting late, though, and he wants to come at it with a clear head. He sets it aside and gets ready for bed. Showers, brushes his teeth, lays down - and stares at the ceiling for an hour. The thoughts won’t stop. Given that the computer is on already it’s just too easy to get up and open up the surveillance program. Telling himself that he really didn’t need to be doing this, Jesse clicks on Gabriel’s office.

It’s empty, but the lights are on. There’s broken glass and liquid on the desk. Jesse frowns and rolls the footage back a few hours, then fast forwards through the blackness until he gets to Gabriel opening the door.

Jesse hadn’t been able to really look at him in the bar, just the quickest of glances to recognize him and then he hadn’t looked again. Now he can see that he’s wearing all black, fabric dark enough to obscure whether it would be good for a little casual B&E or bar hopping. Gabriel sits down heavily in his chair, hand covering his eyes for a solid minute before opening the locked drawer and pulling out a cut crystal glass and a bottle of scotch. He pours three fingers in and tosses half of it back immediately before pouring more. 

His computer flashes, and Gabriel sighs to see the caller’s identity before hitting a button with a finger. Jack’s face projects up in front of him. 

“Where were you tonight? Could’ve used your help on this tangle with Russia.”

Gabriel shrugs, drinks. “Following a lead.”

“On what?”

Gabriel is silent. Jack sighs, rubs his forehead. “Not the goddamn leaks again, Gabriel. I know you think you’re going to find something -”

“We know who it is.” 

Jack looks interested. “Who?”

Another shrug. “I’ll let you know when we confirm. McCree has a contact, retrieved some information from them tonight.”

“And let me guess, you activated your tracker on him because you’re a paranoid son of a bitch and followed him.” Jack rolls his eyes, visible even on the small screen. “Gabriel, if you’re going to trust anyone…”

“I do, you know that. Just leave it.”

Tracker? 

Gabriel and Jack talk quietly for a while, about things that Jesse doesn’t care about and stops paying attention to. His brain is stuck a few minutes back. Gabriel had a tracker on him? Where? Jesse was half outraged and half...not. There was a strange comfort in knowing that if he were to suddenly go missing, Gabriel would be able to find him.That Gabriel could find him anywhere.

“...and now you’re drinking and sounding like a moody teenager. It’s not cute anymore, Gabe.” Jack sounds - less than happy.

Jesse glances at the screen to see Gabriel glare at Jack, before ending the call with an annoyed slap at the air.

Gabriel sits and drinks some more, until he gets up and frustratedly sets his glass down forcefully. Unfortunately it comes down right on top of the metal edge of a clipboard, and the fragile glass shatters. Gabriel stares down at it, then at the cut across his palm. With a curse he presses a handful of tissues to the deep slice and heads out of the room, not bothering to turn the lights out.

The camera rolls on the empty room, the same scene as shows on the present day film.

Jesse shuts everything down and just sits at his dark desk for a while. Somewhere in Western Europe, Jesse is sure, Sombra is feeling triumphant and doesn’t know why. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

Early the next morning, Jesse gets out the memory stick Sombra gave him and heads to the fourth floor lounge. He needs to be somewhere other than his room. He plugs it in, and there’s a long list of files in front of him, each neatly named. He clicks on the first, and starts reading.

Jesse’s so focused he doesn’t notice the door open, and nearly jumps out of his skin when a hand taps his shoulder. He looks up wide eyed to see Gabriel looking down at him with a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Concentrating hard, I take it?”

“Yeah. I’m goin’ through Bilaver’s details. Just got up to when he joined Blackwatch. It’s…” Jesse shakes his head. “Not pleasant reading.”

“Violence? Abuse?” Gabriel sits at the other corner of the couch in his usual spot.

“Not against him, if that’s what you’re thinking. There could always be things goin’ on behind closed doors, but it seems like this guy had everything. Lovin’ family, friends, a good education, not rich but not hurtin’. And a string of beaten ex-girlfriends longer than my arm, including two teachers and a shrink. The shrink killed herself afterwards. I automatically want to say abuse of power, but in this case it wasn’t them over him.”

“Sounds pleasant.”

“Oh yeah. Lots of manipulation, for no real reason, too. He had great grades and recommendations, but he still jacked up his university records to get into the exact school he wanted with a full ride. Went to America for university, which is where he finessed his language skills, graduated a year early and got picked up by the FBI. That’s where we came in.”

“We can start filling in the blanks from both sides at that point.” Gabriel leans back against the couch, stretches an arm along the back that nearly reaches Jesse. “So I take it you got the information all right.”

Jesse hesitates for a moment before deciding to scrap all his previous thoughts and plans. “You tell me, Gabriel. You were there.”

Gabriel’s hand that had absently been tapping a pattern on the back of the couch stills, the fingers slowly drawing back into a loose fist to protect the cut on his palm. “You saw me.”

“My contact did, though I confirmed. You weren’t exactly hiding.”

“You didn’t have eyes for anything other than her, so I didn’t think I needed to be that subtle.”

“She nearly stabbed me over it, thank you very much.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrow. “Really. Odd reaction given how close you two seemed.”

“‘Seemed’ is the operative word, Gabriel. She’s not interested in me. Or men.” Jesse looks Gabriel in the eyes and holds his gaze. “I’m not interested in women.”

“Then why the floor show?”

“You _ have _ done undercover work before, right? And we’re friends. Sometimes we all can use a little human contact.” Jesse glances away, having been more honest than he anticipated. Jesse doesn’t have much physical contact with people outside of fighting, which is probably why he’s always let Sombra be so touchy-feely with him. Even killers need a hug sometimes.

Jesse clears his throat in the awkward silence. “It got us the information. Leave it at that.”

“You trust her?”

Looking up at the ceiling for a minute, Jesse really considers the question. “I trust her to be absolutely professional within the bounds of our agreement. I trust her not to tell anyone what I had her do. I trust her not to sell me out to someone just askin’. But if someone paid to do to me what I paid her to do to Bilaver? She might well just take it. Might warn me too, given our history, but she’s as equal opportunity as they come.”

“Does she have anything to do with how you’ve been surveilling Bilaver yourself.”

“A bit. That was just a repayment for a favor between friends, that I thought might be useful to us.”

“Okay.” Gabriel is quiet, and Jesse looks over to see him running a finger over the four stitches in his palm.

“What happened there?”

“Stupidity, mostly. Jesse, I…” he stops, then starts again. “I trust you, a lot. More than I should, probably. But when you don’t tell me important things like how you’re running an op, it’s not good. Not just for my own worry, but because it’s dangerous. What if that thug in Basel decided you looked suspicious and went for you? What if your contact decided the risk wasn’t worth it and took you out? If I’m kept in the dark I can’t help.”

They’re both quiet now, and Jesse can feel the warmth from where Gabriel’s knee is close to his. What if he just...stopped, with all the subterfuge?

“It’s the security system,” he says finally. “She gave me access to our security system. That’s how I tracked everyone. It has the usual limits of places without cameras - no one’s quarters, not any of the blacked out rooms like the war room or situation room.” This isn’t...technically a lie. Jesse knows he’s skating thin ice, but at least he’s being mostly honest.

Gabriel is staring at him, but his eyes are a bit unfocused as he’s undoubtedly putting together a hundred bits of information gathered over the past few weeks. “That. That explains a lot, actually. Can you show me?”

Jesse hesitates, and nods. “My quarters. I’ve gotten paranoid about doin’ anything where there are cameras.”

They make their way down to the second floor and over to Blackwatch territory quickly. Jesse’s brain is working to think about the state he left his rooms in. Relatively clean? He pretty much rolled from bed into a shower and then out the door so the bed’s unmade and there might be a towel on the floor. Jesse doesn’t like people in his space. The few times he’s hooked up with agents instead of someone in town, he always has made sure to go to their rooms. Pretty much the only person who’s ever been in there other than Jesse is Genji, and once Dr Ziegler when he was particularly ill.

“Sorry for the mess,” Jesse says over his shoulder as he opens the door. Thankfully it’s not too bad, though Peacekeeper is spread out into her component parts and halfway through cleaning on his desk. It doesn’t block the projection port so Jesse leaves it. 

Gabriel is looking around in obvious interest, taking in the opportunity to observe Jesse in his own territory. He pauses at the bookshelf, craning his neck to read the titles. “I knew you were a reader, but...there are such things as ebooks.”

“I like the feel of paper. Sue me.” Jesse reaches in and grabs a particular book, opening it up to take a memory stick out of the hollowed interior. This isn’t the one he usually uses, this is the one he edited a bit, in case something like this situation ever came up. All the admin office feeds - Gabriel, Jack, Ana - have been deleted, as have the ones for the tech room and medical. Jesse left everything else alone, as those were the only differences between what he had and the surveillance system as far as he could tell.

Gabriel takes a seat in Jesse’s chair and starts to tap around the projected screen, much faster than Jesse did when he first started. He realizes that Gabriel is likely familiar with the surveillance system setup, and a cold sweat springs up on his back to realize Gabriel might find some extra views that he shouldn’t have access to. The cold sweat is then replaced by prickling warmth at the sight of Gabriel in his space, in his chair. He shivers, feeling odd at how Gabriel’s fingers are all over his things.

“I’m assuming you had this checked over for viruses and such,” Gabriel’s voice rumbles out, startling Jesse.

“I had Danny go over it with a fine toothed comb. He says nothin’ can be transmitted, nothin’ can go on the system. And that’s...that’s not how she works. She might well be hired to take us down someday and do it without a second thought, but I don’t think she would sneak it into a present.”

“Lot of trust you place in her.”

“Sometimes you just have to take the chance,” Jesse says quietly.

Gabriel continues to sort through feed after feed. “What are these?” He gestures to the few feeds that are still strings of letters and numbers. 

“I know the complex pretty well, but not every inch of it. Those are lounges and conference rooms and some offices, and those particular feeds are the ones I didn’t recognize. This only came with a couple of big things labelled that I think it pulled from the system: the mess hall, the Blackwatch kitchen, the trainin’ rooms. Everything else I had to label myself.”

“You mind?” Gabriel’s fingers are paused over the keyboard with a nonsense name ready to be relabelled.

“Be my guest.”

Gabriel identifies all but a few rooms, knowing from whatever small unique information he sees whether it’s Conference Room 401B2 or 401B3. He leans back afterwards, lazily swiping through feed after feed. “There’s Jack,” he says in surprise.

Jesse comes over, pushes at Gabriel’s shoulder. “Move, I’ll show you how I’ve been doing it.”

He watches Jack, sees him turn left coming out of the hallway. He’s back at the main screen then to the feed of the hallway he turns into in a split second. Jesse continues to follow him through feed after feed, eventually stopping as Jack pauses just outside the mess hall to talk to Ana. Jesse senses movement behind him, and turns to see Gabriel pulling out his tablet. He presses a few buttons, and on screen Jack’s own tablet starts flashing in his hands. He looks at the tablet interface and accepts the call.

“What’s up?” 

Jesse moves to turn the volume down on the computer before Jack can hear an echo. Gabriel’s face is a combination of amusement and surprise at it all. “Not much, just checking to see if we were still on for dinner tonight.”

“Sure. Could we switch from the Summit to Rêve? I’m in the mood for their steaks.”

“No problem. See you at seven.” They both hang up, and Gabriel watches as Jack puts his tablet away and continues on into the hall with Ana.

“That was...surreal.”

“Isn’t it, though? I’ve only done it a few times and it’s weird no matter who it is. It’s real strange to see someone’s face when they think it’s audio-only.”

“You…” Gabriel pauses, and Jesse sees his brain working. “Do you have to turn the volume down every time?”

“I try to, I’m always afraid that there’ll be just enough of a delay that they’ll hear their voice comin’ out from the computer as well as their mouths and will get suspicious.”

Gabriel narrows his eyes for a split second before rearranging his face into its usual calm. “May I?”

Jesse gets up, lets Gabriel sit back down. Gabriel starts to go through the feeds with intent, seemingly looking for something. He doesn’t find whatever it is, and sits back. “So you have the same capabilities as the tech people do. Are you hooked into their system?”

“As far as I can tell,” Jesse says with a shrug. “It’s not like I wanted to ask them every detail about things and I don’t have any reason to be in the tech hive so I couldn’t go into their system myself - not that I even have the clearances for it. Occam’s razor says that’s probably it.” 

“Would you be willing to give me a copy?” Gabriel sees Jesse’s hesitation, and hurriedly continues. “You don’t have to. You were willing to show it to me and that’s a lot.”

“No, it’s...it’s fine.” Jesse goes into his desk, pulls out a memory stick he’s fairly certain doesn’t have anything on it. He plugs it into the computer and makes sure that it’s empty before dragging the program over. He ejects the stick and hands it to Gabriel, who bounces it in his palm a few times before making it disappear into a pocket.

“Thank you, that...means a lot. Maybe we can split duties now.”

Jesse smiles a bit. “Sure. First goal is to finish goin’ through Bilaver’s file, it’s all the recent stuff that’ll be interestin’ anyways.”

“Meet up to talk about it, what, day after tomorrow?”

“Sounds good. Message me later with details.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Their meeting doesn’t happen as Gabriel’s team is pulled for a mission in Ulaanbaatar the next day. A god program went rogue, taking over an industrial omnic the size of a building and then attempting to demolish the city. They finally bring it down in Sükhbaatar Square, the massive body slamming down and taking ancient statues and dozens of people along with it. The team spends two days pulling bodies out of the rubble, and Jesse doesn’t bother to sleep in favor of finding one more person, one more innocent to save.

Gabriel has to practically drag Jesse away, telling him that there are no heat signatures left. He struggles against Gabriel’s arms, but he’s too exhausted to keep protesting. The flight back is eleven long hours on a slow ship, everyone finally getting some rest. The result is that when Jesse gets back to his quarters he can’t settle, too wired and angry at the god program’s disregard for human life. 

Sleep schedule messed up beyond immediate repair, Jesse ends up in one of the smaller training rooms at three in the morning taking his frustrations out on a punching bag. He doesn’t stop when he hears the door open, the footsteps coming over to him. Gabriel comes into view in clothing that could be for either working out or sleep, soft sweatpants and a thin t-shirt. He braces the bag without being asked, letting Jesse hit harder and faster without having to wait for swingback.

Jesse finally takes a break for some water, guzzling down a bottle Gabriel hands him before tightening the frayed handwraps. 

“Get that tension out?” Gabriel asks quietly.

“No,” is the short reply. Jesse looks around for something to do, something to hit that will get the buzzing frustration out of his veins. He ends up in the center of the room, bouncing on the balls of his feet and looking at Gabriel. “Come on. Just a round or two.”

Gabriel sighs, giving Jesse a long considering look before taking off his shoes and socks and meeting Jesse in on the sparring floor. They easily fall into familiar patterns, slightly crouched and circling each other. 

“You want to talk about it?” Gabriel asks as they trade flickering hits as they move around each other. Jesse goes in low, hitting Gabriel’s center of balance with his shoulder and taking him down to the padded floor before Gabriel throws him off to the side, both men springing back up and breathing easily. 

“It all just seems so pointless, you know?” Jesse’s head jerks to the side, avoiding a punch but nearly biting his tongue in the process. “We’re spendin’ all this time trying to figure out who’s fucking us over from the inside, but we have more than enough problems on the outside.” Jesse misses a leg sweep, landing on his back and rolling away to catch the wind that’s knocked out of him.

“I know. But what’s the alternative? Letting Bilaver or whoever out us to the world? Let even more people get killed by rogue omnics?” Gabriel moves while he talks, using a hip throw to get Jesse on the ground again before pinning him with Jesse’s leg twisted around and helpless. Jesse taps the ground, letting Gabriel pull him up before yanking him off-balance with the assisting hand and tripping him with a leg. Gabriel rolls, coming up to his feet with a smile tugging for just a moment at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m just tired of dead bodies that didn’t ask to be part of any of this.” Jesse is weary, so weary of it all. It’s one thing if Talon attacks Overwatch, if Null Sector goes after them. But when it’s inhuman metal and artificial intelligence against civilians, against children who are just trying to live their lives? He feels helpless against the monolith of the war they’re all involuntarily a part of.

Gabriel has Jesse against the wall, and Jesse knows he’s breathing too fast, is too frustrated to fight well. He winds a leg up between Gabriel’s and lets himself fall, twisting as they go so he has a knee on Gabriel’s collarbone and his arms wrapped around his thighs. Gabriel quickly taps out on Jesse’s leg, airway cut off by Jesse’s shin. They circle each other once more before Jesse slides under, wraps around Gabriel and takes him down with his bodyweight. They struggle, sweaty arms and legs sliding against each other, grunts and pants echoing in the room and sounding like something very different.

Jesse ends up face down on the floor, arms twisted behind him with Gabriel’s legs tangled with his and securing him firmly. Jesse writhes and jerks, trying to throw Gabriel off but Gabriel steadily holds him down. Jesse’s not using any real style any more, emotional and physical exhaustion making him sloppy and easy to predict. He stops moving, subdued, and they lay there long enough in the half-lit room for their breathing to slow, for their skin to stick together. A drop of sweat rolls off of the tip of Gabriel’s nose and lands on Jesse’s cheek, making its slow way down towards the floor.

“You okay, now?” Gabriel’s lips are inches from Jesse’s ear, his breath stirring the hair matted down by exertion. He relaxes his grip just slightly, enough to let Jesse move a bit. Jesse feels like he’s been tense ever since Sombra gave him that damn stick, like he hasn’t relaxed since Venice. He wants to do something that he  _ wants _ . Throwing every bit of sense he’s ever possessed away, Jesse arches his back the small amount he’s able to, grinds his ass slowly back into the curve of Gabriel’s hips. 

Gabriel stills. Jesse can’t even feel his breath against his ear anymore.

Slowly, so slowly the movement is barely detectable, Gabriel presses down. Jesse’s head is still trapped, he can’t see a damn thing but he can  _ feel _ it, he can feel Gabriel hard against him with the hot line of his cock nestled perfectly between Jesse’s cheeks. The thin material of their pants keeping them apart is both too much and not enough.

And then it’s all gone. Jesse is lying alone flat on the floor, his back cold and damp from sweat and suddenly missing heat. He doesn’t move as he hears the quiet footsteps steadily moving away, doesn’t move when he hears the door open and close. He slowly gets up, body finally as wrung out as his emotions are. God. He might have just ruined everything.

Jesse takes his time unwrapping his hands and stowing the bag away. He walks through the empty halls, pausing just a moment outside Gabriel’s office where he sees a faint light shining out from where a bit of rubber sealing has come away from the bottom of the door. He continues on to his own quarters, stripping off clothing as soon as he gets inside on his way to the shower. He washes off his own and Gabriel’s sweat, able to smell where the other man’s cologne rubbed off against him. 

He has no shame in opening up Gabriel’s office feed, rewinding back an hour and fastforwarding until he sees Gabriel open the door and turn the lights on low. The room is dim but Gabriel’s silhouette is clear, the only movement in the room his shoulders as he takes deep breaths. 

“God damnit,” he breathes out in a voice tinged with anger, and in a few quick movements Gabriel has his sweats pulled down. Not bothering to unlock his drawer for proper supplies, he spits into his hand and wraps it around himself. Gabriel’s head hangs down as he braces himself on his desk with one hand, the other one savagely stripping his cock. It’s night and day from the leisurely masturbation Jesse witnessed before, this is more like Gabriel is punishing himself for something.

He comes quickly, striping the dark wood of his desk white with a grunt. Gabriel collapses back in his chair, tucking himself back into his pants with one hand while the other covers his eyes. “God damnit,” he says again, this time with a note of resignation and sadness. He sits there in the dim light of his quiet office for a few more minutes before getting up and leaving, cleaning his desk off perfunctorily with a few tissues.

Jesse closes the tablet up and goes to bed, too exhausted to figure out his own emotions.

-x-x-x-x-x-

They don’t talk about it.

It’s not like there’s really all that much to talk about. All they did was spar a bit and get a little close at the end, that was all. What Gabriel - and Jesse in the shower the next morning - might have done afterwards doesn’t really exist because it was all behind closed doors. So when Jesse sends Gabriel a message a few days later that reads  _ finished the file we need to talk _ , Gabriel easily agrees to meet at the Summit for drinks.

Jesse bypasses their usual table and goes to one in the farthest, darkest corner of the bar. There’s a man at the table next to him, and when Gabriel walks over he glowers at him until he leaves. Gabriel sits on the same side of the table as Jesse - uncomfortably, date-like close, but both ignore it for the sake of privacy and having their backs to a wall.

“He’s our guy,” Jesse says quietly. “His employer is careful, but he’s not. Regular amounts of money appear in an account that he thinks is secure but looked to be pretty easily traced. Even though the idiot is in Switzerland he used an obvious offshore bank in Grenada under his brother’s name. Smaller regular amounts, then a larger one after the attack in Rome and another after Venice.”

“Where is the information going?”

“That’s...what I don’t know. There are two different people he meets with - the thug I saw in Basel and a woman he sees in Austria. My contact ran into the same problems I did when I tried to eavesdrop - they’re paranoid enough that it’s impossible to tell what they’re actually saying in the meeting. Of course…” Jesse trails off in thought.

“Of course what?”

“If we’re looking at people he meets with regularly - we’re assuming that his two families in Croatia and Germany are who we think they are.”

The furrow that seems permanently established in Gabriel’s brow nowadays grows deeper. “So what, the Basel man and Austrian woman are a front, and it’s the families that are suspect?”

“We’ve been dismissin’ him as a cheater. Blackwatch has data on his wife and two kids in Croatia, because they’re under our health insurance - they’re fine. But the other family, the one in Germany. It’s a woman and a child, but I never really looked into them because I assumed it was just him thinkin’ with his dick.”

“Do you have the information on you?”

“Yeah, hold on.” Jesse pulls out his tablet and the data stick. He flips through files until he finds one on the German family. Like him, Sombra hadn’t dug too deep other than to get some pictures and a sketchy bit of information. The woman worked at a local bank, the boy was in preschool, they lived in an apartment in Stuttgart that Bilaver paid the rent of. 

Gabriel pulls out his own tablet, taps for a minute, shows the tablet to Jesse. “Does this bank name look familiar?”

“Yeah, it’s the one that Bilaver’s payments go into.”

“That company owns the bank that the mistress works for.” They sit back, look at each other. Perhaps a coincidence, but perhaps not. 

Gabriel taps his stylus on the table. “Adversary pays money to Bilaver for information. Bilaver reports to Basel and Austria on a regular basis. Bilaver has a mistress who works for Adversary’s bank, and ironically pays for her housing out of his payments from Adversary. Question is - is the mistress the real contact, and does Bilaver know that she is? Are Basel and Austria real contacts, or just a smoke shield?”

“We need to get to -” Jesse starts saying, before both their tablets go off. It’s one of the emergency codes, one that says something is Very Wrong. Both men throw down a few bills and hightail it out of the restaurant. Gabriel drives recklessly fast back to headquarters, and they scramble into uniform as fast as they can.

-x-x-x-x-x-

A scant half hour after leaving the restaurant they’re on an Orca to the outskirts of Geneva with Moira and Genji on board. They exit to chaos. There’s a pile of rubble that used to be a building, surrounded by heavy duty omnic units in Null Sector colors. The team creeps around the edges, using the camouflaging shadows from the flickering fires to hide their progress. Gabriel is about to take a step forward when Genji’s hand appears on his shoulder, stopping him and silently pulling him back. “Talon” is the whisper in his ear a moment later, and when everyone’s eyes adjust they can see the red helmets clumped together in front of them.

Gabriel directs Genji with hand signals to get as close as he can, and the others melt back into the darkness. Long minutes later Genji appears and motions for them to move back. The arms fire is dying down, mostly because there’s very little left to shoot.

“There is - or was, perhaps - a Blackwatch team in there. It was broadcast out to the Talon forces in the area, this is who was able to come. They made contact with the local Null Sector faction and brought them in as well,” Genji says in a low voice.

Gabriel frowns as he stares out at the slowing destruction, pupils wide in the low light. Finally he shakes his head. “Frazier. It has to be her team, this is a secondary fallback location in case their mission went south and the first fallback was compromised. They’ve been investigating heat signatures over at Crêt de la Neige, we thought there might be mining for materials or maybe the start of a factory. I haven’t heard from her in a few days, but we’re still within operational limits. If she failed check in tonight…” He pauses, then shakes his head. “Guess that’s not a problem now.”

The team stays crouched in the darkness for an hour as Talon and Null Sector troops slowly leave. There have been times that their squad has taken on this many, but not with the limited ammo and lack of heavy firepower that they have now.

Gabriel sets Genji on perimeter patrol as he, Moira, and Jesse go to investigate what’s left. It had been a two story building, something that had belonged to the town that had grown away from it. A post office, or perhaps a school. Empty for decades, it had been used as a safe house and touch point in the area. Now it was just so much powdered mortar and centuries-old stones blasted into chunks. 

Moia finds the cache, food and water and medical supplies that had perhaps a day’s worth consumed before being half-destroyed. Jesse finds Selmers, body pulverized nearly beyond recognition. She’s hunched over something, and it’s not until Moira and Jesse pull her off that they see it’s McCue. He has two broken legs, braced with pieces of what looks like broken boards and bungee cords. There’s a piece of pipe going through his chest. 

“Why didn’t they use biotics?” Jesse asks quietly.

“They were all dead in the kit,” Moira replies. “They were newer models, too. Some type of EMP must have hit, it’s the only thing that would drain them.”

Broach and Moran are next, killed by gunfire. As Jesse pulls their bodies out to lay with the others, Moira starts to roll them into body bags. The bags have a charge, reducing their contents to so much ash and bone char that fit into small, tidy cylinders. 

Blackwatch doesn’t leave their own behind, if they can’t help it.

There’s a soft noise, and Gabriel stops shifting stone to tilt his head. It comes again, and he leaps over a mostly-demolished wall to see rubble piled in a corner. Jesse helps him haul it away, until a dark brown hand turned pale with dust is revealed.

“Y’r a lil late, Reyes,” Frazier slurs out when they pull enough debris away to see her face. Gabriel brushes the worst of it away from her eyes as Jesse runs to get Moira.

“You look like hell, Niecy,” Gabriel says as he uncovers her body bit by bit. “You been getting enough sleep? Eating right?”

“F’ck off,” she says, trying to cough and failing. Brown eyes, sclerae gone completely red with burst vessels, meet Gabriel’s. “Dunno where they came from. Outta nowhere. Hunkered down til omnics came.” She takes a rattling breath. “Tell Lugo?” she asks. 

“Tell him yourself,” Gabriel says, but her eyes close and don’t open again. Moira leans forward to take a pulse, shaking her head after a minute. Gabriel opens his mouth to say something, but everyone’s head snaps left as they hear Genji yell something in Japanese before there’s the clash of steel on hardened polymer.

It’s quick and bloody, but omnics don’t bleed. Blackwatch does, though - Moira breaks a cheekbone on an omnic’s arm, Genji’s right shoulder is sparking worryingly, Jesse dislocates two fingers, and Gabriel gets a nasty slash down his back. They’re driven back by sheer numbers, eventually vanishing into the wilderness of the Jura mountains. The Orca picks them up once they reach a clearing, and they head back in pained silence to Zürich. The shattered building will have to serve as Frazier’s cairn.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Moira and Genji head to medical. Gabriel and Jesse exchange a look and head to Gabriel’s office. Gabriel sits on his couch, gingerly, as Jesse unpacks his bag to get his medkit. Gabriel tapes Jesse’s fingers up, then leans back with a wince.

“You need to go to medical.”

“No I don’t.”

“You’re bleedin’ onto your couch, Gabriel.”

He pushes himself forward, resting his arms on his knees. “You got any butterfly bandages in there?”

“Yeah.”

“Good enough.”

They do this, sometimes. Repair each other in the quiet, away from the questions that Angela will ask, away from the looks that Overwatch agents will give them. Gabriel unbuckles his armor, ripping the last bit of shirt holding together in the back. He straddles his chair, leaning forward to rest his head against the back as Jesse tucks the ruined shirt into his waistband. He squirts saline, rinsing the wound. Blood and bits of fabric and detritus wash down his back, the shirt catching the runoff. 

Jesse watches the liquid run down across Gabriel’s back, muscles shifting under the skin. He keeps rinsing a little longer than he has to, one hand braced on Gabriel’s shoulder blade.

He pats Gabriel dry with gauze, pulls him together with butterfly stitches and sure hands that can’t help but linger. He slaps a transdermal patch with a general antibiotic on, and sits heavily back in the chair next to the desk. 

“Go to bed, Gabriel.”

“I have to stay here. Waiting on a confirmation from Jack to come through on...fuck. Something.” Gabriel rotates his chair around, catches Jesse’s tired eyes with his own. “No one was supposed to know they were there.”

“It’s his fault, Bilaver’s. Or their fault, whatever.” Jesse wants to sound bitter, but he’s just thinking about the thirty bucks he hadn’t paid Broach back and how he’ll never have to pay it back ever, now.

“I know. Tomorrow, or,” Gabriel shakes his head, trying to clear it. “Day after, maybe. Or later. We need to get to Stuttgart, get eyes on the mistress. Take her out if we need to.” He closes his eyes, resting his head on his arms. The dried blood in his scars and wrinkles deepens them, makes him look so much older than his years.

Jesse gets up, fumbles at the wall until he finds the hidden cabinet that he’s seen Gabriel use on the surveillance system. He pulls out a pillow and blanket, sets them on the couch. Pulls out another blanket to cover the bloodstain on the back. He pokes and prods, finally gets Gabriel to lay down on his stomach so his wound can dry out. 

He leaves without saying goodbye, Gabriel having drifted off. Jesse goes back to his quarters, pulls up footage of the office he just left out of habit. He showers, the water pounding tired muscles. As he’s about to get into bed, a phone in Gabriel’s office goes off. Gabriel wakes up, rolls off the couch with a pained grunt and goes to answer. Jesse doesn’t know what he and Jack talk about - it’s nearly all codewords.

Gabriel stretches after he ends the call, cut on his back pulling. He goes to the couch and starts to fold up the blanket, then pauses. He’s so still that Jesse eventually taps the screen, wondering if it froze. Slowly, Gabriel looks down at the blanket, then at the hidden closet. There’s a prickle down Jesse’s back, some sixth sense telling him that he screwed up somehow. 

Gabriel looks back between the pillow and blanket and the closet a few more times, face thoughtful. Suddenly, his head snaps up to the black plastic bubble in the corner of the ceiling that houses Athena, and it’s like he’s staring into Jesse’s eyes.

Well, shit. 

He knows. Somehow, he knows. Jesse’s mouth runs dry as he and Gabriel stare at each other with half a building between them, and he reaches forward with a shaky hand to turn the screen off. His own reflection looks back at him from the shiny black surface with an expression of dismay.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse doesn’t see Gabriel much the next day - it’s all training, teaching recruits, and reading up everything he can in Bilaver. He thinks the best bet is to go to Germany at the end of the week: if he keeps to his usual schedule, Bilaver is due to visit his mistress then. One person on the mistress, one on Bilaver...it could work.

He types up his mission report from Geneva that evening, Gabriel’s office quietly broadcasting from his tablet as usual. Jesse had decided not to worry too much, it’s not like Gabriel had any proof or anything, he just happened to look up at Athena’s port and freak Jesse out. That’s all.

Ana calls, and she and Gabriel talk - it seems to be more of a personal than professional call, and so Jesse pays just enough attention to know whether he should shut it off or not. It’s all pretty bland, though, Ana talking about Fareeha and Sam, Gabriel mentioning visiting California for the holidays. Jesse tries not to let his ears perk up too much - Gabriel so rarely talks about his life outside of Blackwatch that it’s tempting to hoard the information. They end the conversation talking about the IJC: there’s some followup (or fallout, Jesse can’t quite tell) from the op Jack had Jesse and Genji pull in Japan. 

They end the conversation with plans to meet with an IJC representative in the next few days. Jesse frowns. Hopefully this won’t interfere with the op in Germany - he’d rather not bring in a new person, rather keep it to just him and Gabriel for the moment. He puts the thought out of his mind as he focuses on finishing the report.

-x-x-x-x-x-

It’s Jesse’s day off. He goes for a run with Genji and then showers, coming out to find his tablet blinking with a message from Gabriel. He wants to talk about Germany. Jesse replies, saying he has an idea, and Gabriel tells him to come to his office. He lazily towel dries his hair before throwing on a t-shirt and sweats - it’s not like he has to look good for anyone and he knows Gabriel won’t care.

The blinds in Gabriel’s office are open, a rare occurrence that’s a concession to the beautiful spring day. Jesse lets himself in the office after a cursory knock, dropping down into a sun-warmed chair. “We should go to Germany this weekend,” he says abruptly. “It’s when Bilaver is due to visit the mistress. One of us could be on her, one of us on him.”

“Sounds like a plan. Any idea of when, specifically?”

“I watched him last night book train tickets to Stuttgart for tomorrow evening. I booked another ticket on the same train. He knows you better than me, so I could follow him there an’ you could track down the mistress.”

Gabriel nods. “I’ll stop by tech and the armory, get us supplies. Plan on...hmm. Two day op, potentially longer if he does anything interesting.”

Jesse taps at his tablet, starting to list what they might need. Tracker dots, bugs both audio and video, should he try and hack Bilaver’s tablet, maybe? Is that something Gabriel could order, without it being on the books?

Gabriel mumbles, half to himself. “Gotta reschedule the meeting with Balfour’s team, need to call Jack. When was that meeting again, with Ana…”

“Balfour isn’t going to be here anyways, his wife went into labor this mornin’,” Jesse says absently as he types. “And what meeting, the one with the IJC?” They should have silenced pistols, he’ll have to leave Peacekeeper at home. Garottes are always a good choice...maybe some knockout drops and tabs, too. See if Moira has something sneaky they could put in a microsyringe.

There’s silence, that Jesse doesn’t notice at first because he’s lost in his own thoughts. When he finally looks up, it’s to see Gabriel looking at him with a complicated expression. There’s some anger, some frustration, and something like a dose of triumph, as if he just solved a puzzle.

“What?” Jesse finally asks.

Gabriel lets the word sit for a minute before answering. “It’s funny that you mention the IJC meeting.” The hair on the back of Jesse’s neck stands up. It’s the casual tone of Gabriel’s that he uses during interrogations, and it’s disconcerting now that it’s directed at him.

“Yeah, so?”

“I say funny, but I really mean worrying. Because that whole debacle with the SEP replication and all, we’re really trying to keep it under wraps.”

“Well, Jack sent Genji an’ I -”

“Oh, I’m well aware,” Gabriel cuts him off easily. “But everything else has stayed quiet. Like the meeting I was scheduling with Ana. We made sure to only discuss it over secure lines, in our offices.”

Jesse is frozen. This is...bad. He got sloppy, and Gabriel’s always been too canny for him. He takes a slow, deep breath, and then the room is full of chairs being knocked over and movement.

He isn’t sure when he decided to run or where the hell he thought he was going or even who moved first, but Gabriel’s been kicking his ass in hand to hand for over a decade now and it’s mostly due to how ungodly fast he can move that big body of his. Before he can really realize what’s going on, Jesse is pinned against the cabinets, Gabriel’s forearm cutting off his air and his other arm making sure Jesse’s dominant hand can’t reach for anything. Jesse is clutching at the fabric at Gabriel’s waist with his other hand, but can’t get the leverage - or the air - to do anything about it.

Gabriel lets up a bit when Jesse’s face starts to turn purple, allows him to take a full breath. Jesse is almost dizzy, and it has nothing to do with the lack of air. He wasn’t sure how he was going to approach the subject of ‘hey so I’ve kind of been spying on you in what’s practically your home for months, oh and I might have feelings for you’, but he didn’t think it would be like this. It would have been late at night, maybe he would have been a little drunk. Or maybe a confession after they got injured, grateful for how Gabriel saved him yet again, and the guilt finally gets to him.

It’s not supposed to be at 9 am on a Thursday morning, bright sun in his eyes with his hair damp. It’s not supposed to be Gabriel figuring it out before Jesse has his own feelings nailed down, before he knows what to say.

They stumble backwards until they’re in the middle of the room, breaths loud in the still air. They’re across from the mirrored side of the cabinet and Jesse can see his own wide eyes and pale face, his fingers still frantically grasping back at Gabriel’s side.

“I think you lied to me,” Gabriel murmurs in his ear. That’s a tone of voice that has no goddamn place on a sunny Thursday morning, and Jesse hopes desperately to not get hard in his sweatpants from either arousal or fear. “It was little things, here and there. Good job on deleting the feed to here before you gave me a copy, by the way.” He tilts his head, Jesse can feel Gabriel’s eyes on him though he’s keeping his own fixed on the far wall. “But you knew where my things were, Jesse, things you weren’t supposed to have known existed.” 

The blankets. If he just hadn’t looked at Gabriel injured and tired, hadn’t been feeling off from the deaths…

God damnit, he’s an idiot.

Gabriel is waiting. Jesse has to lick his lips, dried out from panicked panting. “I...I didn’t mean to. Not at first. It was checkin’ in on a teammate - you take shit care of yourself, Gabriel, and I didn’t realize how much until I paid attention.” Gabriel’s eyes narrow and Jesse realizes that perhaps this isn’t the right tack to take. “And then it was just, fuck. I don’t know, comforting? Like havin’ a radio on in the background while I worked on things. I wasn’t - I wasn’t trying to fuckin’ spy, Gabriel, or, or…” He doesn’t know where to go from there. “I didn’t - I didn’t mean to,” he repeats quietly.

“You have to realize how this looks.” Gabriel says, and they’re pressed so close together Jesse can feel his breath on his neck. “You come to me and insist on finding traitors, with an unverified surveillance system that you claim is from a friend whose identity you won’t give up. And now I find you’ve practically had access to everything I do as well -”

Jesse’s mouth is dry. He didn’t realize, when it was all put together, how bad it might look. He cuts Gabriel off: “I don’t - I didn’t, though. I can’t see your tablet, not even when you project ‘cause unless it’s at certain angles the camera can’t see it. So much is codeworded that I don’t even know what you’re talkin’ about half the time, and the half I do know I’m already involved in.” 

He finally meets Gabriel’s eyes in the mirror, and isn’t prepared for the guardedness he sees in them. “I’ve been here most half my life, Gabriel. I don’t have anyone to sell you out to.” He pauses, a painful second. “This is all I have.” Jesse flexes his hand, wanting to pull it away to do...something, he doesn’t know what, but Gabriel’s grip on his wrist is like iron.

Jesse takes a deep breath, back brushing Gabriel’s chest. “Do you really think I’d betray the group? Betray you?”

Gabriel doesn’t answer. He still doesn’t answer the question when he finally speaks. “Then why did you watch?”

Jesse’s trying to be earnest, to be strong, to be more than the idiot gang member he was a dozen years ago whose identity he still feels clings to him like a stain. But now, though, Jesse looks away from Gabriel, and he can feel his face turning a dull red. It’s not shyness or trying to be coy, he just can’t face this from bare inches away.

“Oh,” he hears Gabriel say quietly, almost surprised. “It’s like that.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anythin’,” Jesse says in a rush. “It doesn’t have to change -”

“Tell me, Jesse.” The purr is back in Gabriel’s voice, and the grip on Jesse’s wrist isn’t holding him down so hard anymore, his thumb smoothly brushing back and forth.

He’s silent. He can’t - he can’t do this. Gabriel’s left arm shifts - no longer across Jesse’s throat, his fingers thread through his hair and  _ tighten, _ pulling Jesse’s head back until it’s resting on Gabriel’s shoulder, Gabriel’s beard brushing against his cheek. He holds Jesse there for a long moment, breath warm and damp against the stretched-out line of Jesse’s throat before tilting Jesse’s head back to vertical.

“You wanted to watch, yeah?” Gabriel says in his ear, lips brushing Jesse’s earlobe and god, he never knew that was an erogenous zone. He gives Jesse’s head a shake, hair pulling almost painfully, and Jesse automatically meets Gabriel’s eyes in the mirror. They’re dark and predatory and Jesse can’t breathe as Gabriel whispers, “Then  _ watch.” _

Gabriel shoves Jesse’s right arm that he’d been holding behind Jesse’s back, pins it there with his chest. Hand now free, he smooths down the front of Jesse’s shirt, down and down until he gets to where Jesse is hard and obvious in his sweatpants. Gabriel’s hand is broad, roughly calloused, and it’s everything Jesse can do to not push up into where he spreads it wide and slowly presses in. Jesse wants nothing more than to rut forward against that hot spread but he’s afraid that if he does anything, that Gabriel will stop.

He doesn’t know what he’d do if Gabriel stops.

The sweatpants are threadbare and low on Jesse’s hips, and Gabriel sends them dropping to the floor in just a moment. He wastes no time in tugging down Jesse’s boxers - old and soft and loose, nothing he’d wear if he ever thought this would be happening.

“Look at you. All I have to do is call you out on your bullshit and put you in your place and you’re practically dripping for it,” Gabriel murmurs quietly. Jesse wants to protest but his red-flushed cock betrays him, the shine of precome on the head traitorous. 

“It’s bad practice to give you what I want, but they always said I was too soft with you,” Gabriel says, and Jesse wonders who the hell was saying that. Jack and Ana, surely. His thoughts fizzle out as Gabriel’s hand comes behind, knuckles brushing over the curve of his ass. Gabriel kicks one of Jesse’s feet wider with a sudden motion and Jesse nearly stumbles. When he regains his balance there’s a finger stroking him between his cheeks, slowly, slowly.

“Tell me, Jesse. What did you see?” Gabriel’s finger stops, the tip just on the edge of Jesse’s hole, and he realizes after a belated second that Gabriel isn’t going to move an inch unless Jesse answers.

“I. It was mostly you takin’ notes and havin’ meetings and makin’ calls.” Jesse’s voice is unsteady, almost a slur.

“I seem to remember you calling at some interesting times,” Gabriel says, and Jesse’s face flushes harder.

He decides to throw in the towel and the last of his dignity. It’s not like it could get any worse, right? “I wanted to hear what you sounded like,” he says raspily, honestly. “After you -” he stops.

“After I what, Jesse?” Gabriel says like he doesn’t expect an answer, finger picking up its pace like it never stopped. He pulls away to reach into a drawer but Jesse isn’t paying attention because Gabriel’s bent his head to drag his lips up Jesse’s throat. It’s not a kiss, just lips against softly stubbled skin, and a thin trail of coolness left behind that Jesse realizes is from the very tip of Gabriel’s tongue.

When the finger returns it’s slick and sliding its way deep into Jesse. His mouth is open, no noise but with the vulnerable inside of his mouth showing. It’s all Jesse can do to keep his eyes open. One thick finger becomes two and Jesse nearly misses it when Gabriel says, “Did you want it to be you in the room with me?” Jesse nods jerkily. “Touching me, or -” Gabriel bites at the corner of Jesse’s jaw and he lets out something like a whimper. “- Maybe on your knees for me?” 

Jesse’s mouth is hanging slack as he pants now, breathing heavily as Gabriel twists his fingers into him. He nearly cries out when they withdraw, but he feels the back of Gabriel’s hand brush against him as he undoes his own pants. Soon Gabriel is guiding something into him that’s much thicker and hotter than any fingers. Jesse moans as Gabriel slides in deeper and deeper, there’s not enough lube and not enough prep but  _ fuck, _ this is what he wanted, what he always wanted.

“You wanted to watch, now watch,” Gabriel growls before pulling back and shoving himself in. Jesse has to rebrace his feet, push back against Gabriel so he isn’t knocked over. His arm that’s twisted behind him is going numb but Gabriel’s fuckng him and he just doesn’t care. 

Jesse looks at Gabriel in the mirror through slitted eyes, watches Gabriel’s gaze move greedily from Jesse’s open red mouth down to his leaking cock and back up. Jesse pulls his hand away from where it’s been locked on Gabriel’s hip and reaches for himself. Gabriel slaps his hand away, fingers sticky with lube. Jesse looks at him in startlement and is met by a dark look.

“Come from being fucked or not at all,” is what he gets, followed by a hard thrust that hits just right inside of him. Jesse nods and closes his eyes, intent on focusing on his pleasure so he can come. His eyes fly open at a hard bite to the side of his throat, one that’s going to leave a mark. “I told you to watch.”

Jesse takes a deep breath that’s released in several short gasps from the relentless rhythm that Gabriel is pounding into him. There’s a hand hot on his hip, and Gabriel’s fingers tracing across the bone. The ghost of a touch across thin overheated skin, then Gabriel is cupping his balls in his broad palm. Reaching back to rub at the thin skin just behind - 

His head snaps back, and Jesse can’t tell if he’s not breathing or moaning. Gabriel has stilled behind him as Jesse shudders through his orgasm, motionless but for the hand cupped around his cock, thumb resting on the head so he doesn’t get it everywhere. 

Jesse blinks himself back into reality as Gabriel wipes his hand on Jesse’s shirt. “Nice,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t have himself together enough to snark properly. Gabriel nudges behind him, shuffles Jesse a step forward, then another. 

“Brace yourself,” he says in Jesse’s ear, tugging Jesse’s arm free and pushing at his hands to hold himself up against the mirrored cabinet. One hand is wrapped around the side of Jesse’s ribs, still damp with his come. The other is still holding Jesse tightly by the hair, forcing him to look at them in the mirror. Look at how Gabriel has pressed his mouth to Jesse’s shoulder, breath hot against his neck, perhaps to keep himself quiet or maybe to keep himself from biting down. Look at Jesse’s own face, color high in his cheeks and sweat running down into his beard. Wrecked and out of control in the most delicious of ways, shaking as Gabriel slams into him over and over again. 

He can’t move, but why would he ever want to?

Jesse loses track of time, feet starting to go numb and head feeling full of cotton by the time Gabriel’s fingers dig hard into his side. He wouldn’t have been able to hear anything if he was six inches farther away, but with Gabriel’s mouth next to his ear Jesse can hear him pant out his release, groaning ever so softly deep in his throat. 

They stay like that for a minute or two, breath slowing and skin cooling down. The mirror in front of them is blurry with condensation from Jesse’s breath and the heat of his skin, and Jesse is glad he can’t see his own expression when Gabriel pulls out of him. His knees crack when he crouches down to grab his underwear and pants, and he winces at the feel of a drip down his inner thigh as he pulls them up. 

Gabriel, not that he had done much other than unzip his pants, is clothed and sitting in his chair by the time Jesse turns around and gingerly sits. If it wasn’t for the slight flush to his cheeks, you wouldn’t know anything had happened. He taps at his computer keyboard, brings up the hypertrain schedule. 

“What time did you book your train ticket for?”

Jesse stares at him, blinking for a moment. “Ah. 1900 local time. Same as Bilaver.”

Gabriel touches the screen here and there. “I’ve booked myself for two hours beforehand. I’ll go to the mistress’s hotel, try and get access to the room and put some surveillance in there. I can then stick to her while you take Bilaver. Let’s meet tomorrow to go over equipment.” His voice has the tone of a conversation that’s over.

Jesse stands up automatically, but his sore muscles make themselves known immediately. “That’s it, then,” he says.

Looking up at Jesse from his screen, Gabriel’s eyes are dark and unreadable. “Beg pardon?”

Jesse finds himself smiling, the corners of his mouth twisting into something with zero humor. “We both just go on our merry way and ignore what just happened, is that it?”

Gabriel leans back in his chair, and Jesse’s eyes get caught on his hands flexing on the arms. Hands that have been inside him, now. “What did you want out of this, Jesse? What exactly did you expect to happen afterwards?” He sounds - tired. 

Mouth open, Jesse finds he doesn’t know what to say. It’s why he’d always gotten stuck before, had never made a move. Because where do they go from here? An agent and his commander - Blackwatch gets to make their own rules, but there are limits. Closing his mouth, Jesse nods tightly and pushes his chair in. He’s about to turn and leave when Gabriel leans down to open a drawer, tosses something black at him. It’s fabric, one of Gabriel’s innumerable black zip up sweatshirts. 

“Wear this, you’re a mess,” Gabriel says. Jesse looks down at himself and, yes, he does in fact have fresh stains all over his shirt thanks to Gabriel. Wordlessly he pulls the sweatshirt on and zips it up, glancing back at Gabriel as he walks to the door. Gabriel’s face is calm but his fingers are digging into the arm of the chair. 

Jesse lets the door to Gabriel’s office shut behind him quietly. He leans back against it for a minute, taking long shuddering breaths, before starting the walk back to his quarters. He looks at the familiar walls around him, and wonders if they’re still home. If he has a home, now, or if he just torpedoed the only place he’s felt truly welcome.

It’s still a bright spring Thursday morning, but somehow Jesse’s whole world changed. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse’s having a nice dream about floating in an endless sea when a seahorse the size of an actual horse comes up to him and says, “Despierta, tu pendejo de mierda.”

“That’s kinda harsh,” Jesse says, and now the seahorse has purple eyes and a sour look on its face.

“Answer your goddamn tablet!” it tells him, grumbling, “Puta madre,” to itself in a frustrated tone of voice.

Jesse wakes up at that, because no one, oversized fish or not, says that about his mama. Instead of a seahorse, though, now he’s looking at the ceiling of a shitty German motel, and his tablet is flashing at him from across the room.

“JESSE!” the tablet yells at him, and now that he’s awake he can tell it’s Sombra.

He stumbles over to the table, stabs at the tablet with clumsy fingers. “How the hell could you activate it when you’re not even here?” he says by way of greeting.

“Forget that and listen up,” she snaps back. “Your boss is in a shitload of trouble.”

Jesse is immediately awake, adrenaline doing the job of caffeine in the moment. He pulls out his phone, stabs the screen. The tracker that’s on Gabriel has gone dark. Fuck.

“Talk to me,” he says, pulling his boots and body armor on.

“I’ve been keeping a recreational eye on you two,” Sombra says blithely, her face on the screen the picture of innocence, “That asshole you had me look up is the type to stick his pointy little nose into my world and cause problems later, so I wanted to see how it shook out.” Sombra’s face vanishes from the tablet screen and what looks like security footage appears. 

The last contact Jesse had with Gabriel, they were packing it in for the night. Jesse had followed Bilaver on the train, Gabriel had bugged the room that the mistress had reserved, and Gabriel would watch them that night so Jesse could take over the following morning. It’s been all of four hours since they last spoke - Gabriel had a room in a motel a few streets over that he set up the surveillance equipment in, Jesse was due to meet him there in - he checks his watch - four hours.

What’s filling the screen is Gabriel sitting on a bed, five different tablets in front of him. The view looks to be from a hidden security camera somewhere near the ceiling - nothing the motel should have running, but Jesse is thankful it’s there so Sombra could hack in. 

Gabriel has an earpiece in and is listening intently to whatever is happening on the screen in front of him, so he doesn’t notice the window behind him slide up quietly. He also doesn’t notice the person dressed in form-concealing head to toe black ease their upper body inside and raise a tiny, strange looking silver gun. 

A second later there’s a dart of some kind sprouting from Gabriel’s neck, He puts his hand to it, pulls the dart out and examines it. Jesse knows from experience that it takes more than the usual amount of anything to put Gabriel out, but the poor bastard hanging in the window apparently doesn’t know it. Gabriel yanks him inside - the figure is shown to be a him as Gabriel rips his mask off - and promptly starts to beat the hell out of him. 

Unfortunately the man’s arm isn’t held down quite hard enough, and four more darts hit Gabriel in the arm. He tries to pull them out but his movements slow before he finally crashes to the floor. The shooter rolls himself out from under Gabriel with some effort, before kicking him viciously in the ribs. Jesse’s eyes narrow in anger.

The man pulls out a phone, makes a call and snaps out something in a language Jesse doesn’t recognize. He uses a gun to shoot all of the tablets into piles of useless, shattered tech before tying Gabriel up. A minute later, a lanky omnic slides in through the window. It picks Gabriel up and a moment later, the room is empty.

Jesse stares at the surveillance video, showing sparking tech, a still-made bed, and an empty room with no Gabriel.

“When.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice.

“About an hour ago. I linked in to your trackers, they must have used something to deactivate his.” Their trackers are designed to be unnoticable, Jesse’s is a small patch of black that blends into his tattoo. He doesn’t know where Gabriel’s is, but he does know the trackers keep working even after death, even after the limb it’s attached to is removed. He breathes carefully.

“Where are you?”

“I’ll be at your motel in half an hour. Be ready to move.”

Jesse clicks his tablet off and pulls out his bag of weapons.

-x-x-x-x-x-

When Sombra finally shows, Jesse’s practically worn through the carpet by his pacing. “Took you long enough,” he snarls, and she makes a face back at him.

“I’m sorry, did you want any help with this?” she snaps back, and unloads what looks like enough equipment to launch a spaceship.

“What’s all this for?” Jesse says suspiciously, especially after she pulls out something that looks like a metal syringe.

“I’m going to figure out where they took him, because I’m better than them,” she says patiently. “Now. You have a tracker like Reyes, yes? Where is it?”

Jesse silently rolls up his sleeve and holds out his arm, pointing to the tattooed lock. Sombra holds the syringe up to it, and it turns out to be some sort of scanner that runs green light over the tracker. She touches the syringe to a tablet, and starts to type. Jesse is patient for five minutes, anxious for ten, and finally snaps about half an hour in.

“We don’t know what could be happenin’ to him right now. Where the fuck is he?”

Sombra doesn’t look up from her tablet. “I’m using what I know your tracker is like to find the hole where his tracker should be,” she says finally. “It’s more complicated than that but I’d rather spend my time working instead of explaining if it’s all the same to you.”

Jesse snorts, but nods and continues his pacing. 

After an hour, Sombra leans back. Her normally perfect makeup is smudged, and it’s doing little to hide the exhaustion in her face. “He’s southwest of here. Basel, it looks like.”

Jesse breathes a sigh of relief. Okay. They’re likely at that hotel, the one Jesse saw before. And it’s closer to Zürich, closer to home - if things go bad, he has options. He grabs up his bags, Sombra putting away her things quickly.

“I know where they are, I think.”

“Get me closer and I can see what I can do.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

“I can’t work with you breathing down my neck.”

“It’s room 501.”

“I know, Jesse. Take a goddamn look.” Sombra spins the screen around to show what looks like a family of five rooting through various suitcases. “Does this look anything like your commander? No. So shut up and let me find him.”

Sombra’s voice breaks the silence, long minutes later. “You’re not going to like this, Jessito.” 

Jesse scrambles to get next to her on the motel bed, heedless of the technology he’s sitting on. There’s a screen showing what looks like a concrete room, Gabriel tied firmly to a chair in the middle.

“I think he’s in the basement of that hotel, some room that was...I don’t even know, perhaps used as a bomb shelter at one point given the thickness of the walls. You’re lucky, the cameras there are on a closed system I shouldn’t have been able to get into but. Well. It’s me,” she sounds satisfied but Jesse doesn’t have eyes for anything but what’s on the screen.

“We need to go -”

“This is from hours ago. See what they did to him, what they wanted. Then we can plan.”

There’s a woman standing in front of Gabriel. It’s the mistress, the one that Gabriel was supposed to be following in Stuttgart that never showed. She has an omnic by her side, hulking and brutal looking - military grade. She snaps something at Gabriel in what Jesse thinks is Croatian, and Gabriel shakes his head. She tries again in German, and Gabriel answers her. 

“Do you have a translation program?” he asks Sombra, and she starts to type.

_ -ou and your partner are finished. You should not have tried to interfere, _ the woman says. 

_ Bilaver - _ Gabriel starts to say, and the woman laughs. 

_ That’s not the one I meant, mein Lieber. The one with the American accent and the hair, the unfortunate hat. _

_ I don’t know what - _

_ You must have good milliners in America, the hat stayed on even as we took off his head.  _ Gabriel’s face doesn’t change at her words, but Jesse can see the muscles of his jaw tighten. He stays silent.

At a wave of the woman’s hand, the omnic steps forward. It cuts the straps of Gabriel’s armor effortlessly, tearing open his shirt and putting slits in the thighs of his pants. It’s careless as to how it cuts, and soon blood is soaking in and turning black fabric darker. The omnic places what looks like small silver dots on bare skin - legs, arms, chest, neck. Temples. It’s nothing that looks good, and Jesse shifts in his seat. The only thing keeping him from leaping up right there is seeing the timestamp on the video and needing to know what happened.

The woman starts to ask questions, about Bilaver and what they know. About Null Sector - hah, Jesse thinks to himself in triumph - and their western European activities. 

Gabriel doesn’t answer, and the woman seems to tire of talking to a wall. She taps casually at the phone in her hand, and Gabriel’s head snaps back. Jesse can see the muscles in his legs seizing, twisting and writhing under the skintight fabric of his pants. 

Tapping her tablet again, the electric shock stops and Gabriel sags in his seat.  _ I do like my men tenderized _ , she says with a smile, and starts the questioning again.

Jesse wants to fast forward but he can’t. He watches Gabriel sit and be questioned, watches Gabriel twist and pant as he’s shocked again and again. His right upper arm breaks at one point, the electrified muscles proving stronger than the bone. Jesse hears what he thinks is the cracking of teeth, and his own jaw aches in sympathy. 

The woman gets angrier, the omnic beside her a silent, frozen presence. She hits the button again and again, until Gabriel is unconscious with bloody drool dripping from the side of his mouth, sitting in a puddle of blood-tinged urine. Jesse doesn’t realize he’s shaking in fury until Sombra puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

The room is empty but for Gabriel now - the woman and the omnic leave. Sombra checks the time - it’s been about an hour since they left. Jesse’s already strapping up with every weapon he can find. 

“Where did she go,” he asks, but it’s less of a question than an order.

Sombra’s lips thin out at his tone, but she types rapidly. “They took a first floor room,” she says finally. “But Jesse -”

“You can come or you can get out of my way,” he says. A minute later Sombra is wearing a black coat, braiding her hair back as they make their way to the hotel.

Outside, Jesse stops and looks at Sombra. “Do you have something to take down the omnic?” he says abruptly.

She rolls her eyes as she digs through pockets. “What would you have done if I said no - Jesse, damnit!” Jesse has already snatched what looks like a one-button remote from her hand and is striding into the foyer. 

If you walk like you know where you’re going, people tend not to bother you, and Jesse’s stride right now is nothing but purpose. He finds room 175, stopping and waiting for Sombra and her shorter legs to catch up. 

“I can shoot out the lock but if you can open it, I’d be grateful,” he says, fumbling for the last bit of politeness he possesses. 

Sombra slides what looks like a dental mirror against the palm pad, fingers moving against a projected screen as she croons to the electronics, convincing them to do what she wants.

The sound of the lock disengaging has barely hit their ears before Jesse’s slamming the door open. The omnic, seven feet tall and even more intimidating than on screen, comes for him immediately. Jesse points the remote at it and hits the button. The omnic collapses in a clatter of metallic limbs as Jesse tosses the remote over his shoulder, Sombra cursing about expensive tech as she snatches it out of the air.

The woman is wearing a dressing gown, but she produces a knife out of nowhere and slings it at Jesse’s head. He jerks his head to the side and lets it hit the wall behind him without pausing. The security video didn’t show how the woman has at least half a foot on Jesse in bare feet, and more muscles than Reinhardt. As he shoots for her leg he makes a mental note not to grapple with her.

At least not fairly. 

Jesse’s shooting with his silenced pistol, the woman is firing those little darts at him that took Gabriel out, and to be honest it’s just sheer luck that has the woman tripping over the collapsed omnic and letting Jesse hit her in the kneecap.

She goes down cursing, and Jesse gets her in a submission hold on the floor, one foot pressing the back of her shattered knee into the floor.

“Who are you,” he growls into her ear. 

He can see her smile, even with her face pressed half into the carpet. “More powerful than you will ever know,” she says in reply.

Jesse grinds his boot down harder and her face turns waxy pale. “What has Bilaver been telling you?” he demands. “What are you doing with the information?”

The woman keeps smiling, and turns her head. Turns it and turns it until her neck is twisted fully around and she’s looking Jesse in the face. Underneath her skin, things - shift. Planes that aren’t bone rise and fall, cheekbones sinking and chin jutting out, until Jesse is suddenly looking at a new person. 

“We are legion,” she whispers. “Your Blackwatch slut was the least of us.” Leaning closer, there’s a light in her eyes that is wild, unreal. “Get ready for your world to crumble.” Her grin widens and he can see her tongue press at a molar, harder and harder until it shifts sideways. The light in her eyes goes out as she foams at the mouth, and Jesse tries to find a pulse in her neck but all he can feel is what seems to be metal where it should be her spine.

Jesse stands, nudging at the still body, but even her leg no longer pulses blood. He turns to Sombra, who holds a finger up as she furiously types in midair with her other hand. After a minute she sighs and wipes the screen out of existence. 

“I’d heard of them,” she says. “Omnics with cloned human coatings. Something like - the next stage of evolution from your friend Genji.” She shakes her head. “Right before she hit her kill switch, she sent out a burst of information. Nothing I could stop, I don’t even know what she sent. We need to get out of here, though.”

“Not without Gabriel,” Jesse states flatly. Sombra politely doesn’t say that they don’t know if he’ll be alive or not when they retrieve him. “Bring the car to the closest entrance to the basement, call me when you get there.”

He pauses as he looks around the trashed room, at the pile of metal and the thing that was once a woman. 

“I’m taking her with me,” Sombra says. “We’ll consider it payment for this debacle.”

Jesse nods tightly. He hadn’t been thinking about what he’d owe Sombra. If it was for Gabriel, it didn’t matter. 

They split up, Sombra outside to get the car and Jesse following a map on his phone. He slips through a door marked with what he bets says ‘Employees Only’ in German, and makes his way down, down, down.

The building the hotel is in was built hundreds of years ago, somehow survived multiple wars and worse. Jesse walks through halls of dark concrete and darker stone, feeling like he’s going into the underworld.  _ Don’t look back, _ he thinks half-hysterically, before he finally finds a door that has a couple of lengths of pipe shoved through the door handles to primitively lock it from the outside. 

Gabriel is slumped over, in the exact position he was in when Jesse saw him on the surveillance tape hours ago. Jesse rushes forward, and the strong beat of Gabriel’s pulse against his fingers is the best thing he’s ever felt. 

He cuts Gabriel loose, careful with the broken arm. One by one he takes the electrodes off, and the raw red spots they leave behind look painful. It’s not until Jesse is carefully splinting his arm with the pipes from outside and both their belts that Gabriel stirs, blinks eyes open whose whites are more of reds now with broken vessels. 

“J’sse.” 

“Don’t talk, okay, we’re getting you out of here.”

“We?”

“Stop talking, fuckin’ Christ. Me and Sombra, she helped me with this shit.” 

Jesse presses Gabriel down into the chair when he struggles to rise, and it’s worrying how easy it is. “Woman,” Gabriel says through swollen lips. “An’ omnic. Said y’were dead.”

“They’re gone, okay. They’re the dead ones, not me. It’s - more complicated than that, but you don’t have to worry for the moment.” 

Gabriel gives him a long look, nods. Leans forward until his head is resting against Jesse’s shoulder, unsteady breaths spilling down his neck. 

“We’re going to get going, okay? Can you stand?”

Not really, not without a lot of help. Jesse walks slowly, holding most of Gabriel’s weight up awkwardly. He’d carry him, but can’t figure out a way to do it that wouldn’t be harder on the broken arm. It’s thankfully a short walk to the loading dock that Sombra’s texted him, but it still takes them the better part of half an hour to get there. 

By the time Jesse and Gabriel emerge blinking into the sunset, Sombra is shoving a suspiciously leg-shaped garbage bag wrapped object into the trunk. Jesse raises an eyebrow and she shrugs elegantly. “I mean, you can always pay me but this is easier.”

They get Gabriel into the backseat and Jesse reluctantly follows, mostly because Gabriel’s hand is locked around his arm and Jesse doesn’t want to hurt him in order to get him to let go. Sombra drives them to a private airport just outside of Zürich, where several large men in sunglasses help her unload the bodies from the trunk into a small hovercraft.

Jesse gets out, after carefully laying Gabriel down who has fallen blessedly asleep. He looks at Sombra, hands shoved in his pockets and feeling exhausted and awkward.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” he says. “If you weren’t there…”

Sombra smiles, tired and not unkindly. “You would have found a way to make it work.” Her eyes go past Jesse to the open car door, where Gabriel is just visible. “Don’t fuck it up, cariño. I’ve put too much effort into the two of you at this point.”

Jesse’s mouth hangs open, unsure of what to say. Sombra closes it with a finger, then pats him on the cheek - perhaps closer to a slap, but it leaves Jesse with a faint smile. She sashays off to the hovercraft and is gone in minutes. 

He turns back to the car, and starts the drive back to headquarters.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“No medical.”

“Gabe -”

“No.” 

They stare at each other, each unwilling to give up. Jesse caves first. “Fine, but I’m goin’ there to get proper supplies to patch you up.”

“As long as you don’t tell them why,” Gabriel says as they start to make their limping way out of the garage, towards the elevator.

Jesse lets Gabriel guide them, and they end up at his quarters. It takes a few tries for them to get in - Gabriel has a few broken fingers that won’t let his hand lay flat on the palm pad. Jesse wants to look around, he’s never been here before, but his arms are full of Gabriel who keeps lurching in unexpected directions. They end up getting him onto a chair at what looks like a small kitchen table.

“Stay here. I’m going to get supplies and we can patch you up -”

“I’m showering.” 

“You can’t shower with this many things broken.”

“I’m taking a fucking shower, Jesse.” There’s a slightly wild look in Gabriel’s eyes, and Jesse takes a deep breath and remembers that the man just went through several hours of torture.

“If I let you shower, you goin’ to let me back in so I can fix you up?” There’s silence for a few stretched seconds, before Jesse says, pleads, “Please, Gabriel.”

Gabriel rolls his eyes - SEP healing is good for something after all, his eyes are already back to bloodshot instead of completely red - and grudgingly nods. 

Jesse doesn’t ask if he needs help getting undressed, he knows Gabriel would say no just as surely as he knows Gabriel needs the help. He uses his knife to cut off the last of Gabriel’s chest armor - “The entire front is gone! You want to try and get the back off with a broken arm?” - and widens the tear the woman made in his shirt to pull it all off. Boots are next - “Don’t fucking throw those away, Jesse” - and the ripped and stained pants.

Silently Jesse gathers up everything but the boots and throws it in the trash. Gabriel’s eyes follow him around the room. He’s broken and bloody in nothing but his underwear, and yet he’s still the most dangerous thing in the room.

“Come on, up and at ‘em.” Jesse helps Gabriel into the bathroom, taking a moment to show amusement at the surprisingly varied selection of styling products and implements. He sits Gabriel down on the toilet seat and starts the shower.

“I’m gettin’ stuff to fix you up. Let me back in or I’ll get Ana to do it,” Jesse says, looking down at Gabriel with more confidence than he feels. 

Gabriel just nods silently, which probably says more about how he’s feeling than any words would. 

Jesse walks quietly out, pausing at the door to listen. He hears Gabriel get into the shower, and hears a moan of pain that he knows he isn’t supposed to hear. Closing the door, he walks off down the hallway. 

He first dumps his own body armor and bloodstained clothes in his quarters and changes into civvies, not wanting to invite any more questions than necessary. He slips a bottle into his pocket, knowing he’ll likely end up needing it. He’s just hoping that someone, anyone is in medical other than -

“Hey Angie.”

“Jesse.” Measuring blue eyes look him over with instant, professional analysis. “You’ve looked better.”

“I’m fine, really.” He clears his throat. “I just need a few things.”

“All right, tell me what you need.” When Jesse doesn’t immediately answer, Angela sighs and crosses her white-coated arms. “I’m not just going to let you raid my supplies, Jesse.”

“Fine. Uh, finger splints, a couple of them. Saline, gauze. Butterfly stitches.” He pauses, considers. “What do you have that could brace a broken upper arm?”

Blonde eyebrows raise. “A broken humerus? A fiberglass cast and about three months of healing.”

Jesse’s already shaking his head. “No, just something temporary. For, I dunno. A week, maybe.”

Angela steps forward, peering at Jesse with a frown on her face. “There’s nothing like that, because people don’t heal like that. Not normal ones, in any event.” She narrows her eyes. “What did Commander Reyes do?”

“Nothin’ I can tell you about. And he won’t come in, so. Just let me fix him up the best I can. Please, Angie.”

She swears under her breath - Jesse really does need to learn German at some point - but starts throwing things into a white box. Disappearing through a door, Angela reappears a few minutes later with something in her hands that seems to be mostly fabric and straps. “It’s a brace. It’s not enough, all right? Try and get it on him and have him keep the arm elevated for as long as he can.” 

Jesse hefts everything up into tired arms, leans down to press a kiss to her cheek. “You’re the best.” He turns toward the door, pauses. Turns back. Puts on a sheepish grin. “Could you...maybe not mention this to Jack? Or Ana.”

Angela sighs, rubs her forehead. “I don’t want to know anything more about it, Jesse. Bring back what you don’t - you know what, never mind. You’ll end up needing it at some point, I am sure.”

Jesse shoots her a last, thankful grin, and leaves as fast as he can.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Gabriel opens the door surprisingly quickly. Surprising until Jesse sees how pale his face is, nearly ash in color. 

“Sit down before you fall down,” Jesse says, and guides Gabriel back to the chair he was in before. Turning, Jesse starts rooting through Gabriel’s fridge and then cabinets. “Where’s your booze?”

“In my office.” Jesse raises an eyebrow at him. “If I start drinking here I don’t stop, so I save it for work.” 

“So fuckin’ weird,” Jesse mutters before pouring a glass of orange juice. Ew, pulp. He pulls the bottle of pills from his pocket, shakes three out and hands them to Gabriel with the juice. “Drink these down.”

Gabriel does so, though not without a, “And where’d you get these? Not medical, I’m assuming.”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

The arm is the worst, so Jesse gives the pills a minute to kick in before figuring out the brace. “You’re supposed to keep it elevated,” he says as he starts to pull the straps tight. Gabriel doesn’t answer, he’s gritting his teeth and digging hard fingers into his own thigh. Once it’s on he moves the arm around.

“Better,” he says eventually.

Jesse splints Gabriel’s two broken fingers, tells him that he can’t flip anyone off for a while. He doesn’t even get a courtesy grunt, and when he looks up into Gabriel’s face, his eyes are closed and mouth tight with pain. 

It takes their combined effort to get Gabriel’s sweatpants down - Jesse doesn’t know why he bothered putting them on at all, he’s already bled through them. Nothing is deep enough to need full stitches, but without the butterfly closures they’ll just keep seeping blood. Gashes on each leg, one bad one on his chest. 

Gabriel staggers to his feet and Jesse’s there to catch him, supporting him as they head down the hallway. Jesse tries not to notice all the warm skin under his hands, how Gabriel leans trustingly into him. It’s not the time, McCree.

Jesse gets Gabriel into bed - large, softer and more comfortable than he’d been picturing - and heads back out to the kitchen. He comes back with a glass of water and sets that and the bottle of pills on the nightstand.

“Don’t take more than - well. I guess it doesn’t really matter with you, but I don’t have more so ration ‘em out. Try and eat some food, they’re not great on an empty stomach.”

Jesse is turning to leave when a hand grabs his wrist. ‘Grab’ might be a strong word when two of the fingers are in splints, but Gabriel holds on. Jesse looks down, and Gabriel is silent. 

He’s just about to figure out how to pry him off without hurting him when Gabriel says, “Stay.”

It looks nice written out like that, but in real life Gabriel looks like he’s chewing on ground glass, like he wishes he was saying anything else. Jesse opens his mouth then closes it, unsure of what to say. Whatever - Gabriel started this, he can damn well finish it.

“I just.” Gabriel closes his eyes for a moment, opens them again. He looks tired, so tired. “Stay, Jesse.”

Jesse waits for a few seconds, processes. “This isn’t some kind of fucked up thank you, is it?”

Wrecked as he is, Gabriel is still fully capable of looking at Jesse like he’s an idiot. “No.” 

“You said it yourself,” Jesse says quietly. “What do you want out of this?” He feels a bit like an asshole but he’d rather that now than get hurt later on.

“What the hell is the point of worrying about chain of command when there’s barely an organization to hold it up?” Gabriel bites out, and Jesse can hear the pain in his voice that has nothing to do with his injuries. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, don’t know who or what I can trust here.” He meets Jesse’s eyes and it’s like a punch in the chest. “Except you.”

They both breathe into the quiet for a long minute, eyes on each other, Gabriel’s broken hand still around Jesse’s wrist. 

“Okay,” Jesse says roughly, then clears his throat. “Okay.” 

He glances down the hallway. “Let me get the lights.” He goes down the hall, turns the kitchen lights off. Leans against the table for a minute, staring down at the carpet. It’s been a day that felt roughly ten years long, and he has no idea what his emotions are doing. Jesse shakes his head at himself, and pads back into Gabriel’s bedroom. He steps out of his sweatpants, climbs carefully into bed so as not to jostle Gabriel.

Gabriel, who’s setting a tablet down. “You shouldn’t be looking at screens,” Jesse says disapprovingly. “You probably have a concussion, and with the pills it’s a bad idea.”

A click, and the lights are off. It takes a moment for Jesse’s eyes to adjust, but the room is surprisingly bright. The moonlight streaming in through the window isn’t romantic - it’s white and cold and turns Gabriel’s harsh profile into something that belongs on a statue. 

“Bilaver’s dead. Ana just texted, body was found in an alley in Stuttgart,” he says into the quiet of the dark.

Jesse blinks. He honestly can’t give a shit. “Good riddance,” he says, and it’s not until the words come out that he realizes how angry he is.

Gabriel turns on his side, wincing as he balances his broken arm and lays it along his side. His eyes are blurry from the painkillers but his voice is clear as he asks Jesse, “You okay?”

A startled laugh, too loud in the intimacy of the room. Jesse rolls over himself, looks at Gabriel from a few inches away. “I’m fine, you’re the one that got torn to bits.”

“Jesse.”

He sighs. “I guess. I - yeah.” He reaches out, given courage by the quiet and sheer exhaustion. Traces a hand down Gabriel’s face, ends up cupping his jaw, rubbing a finger across stubbled skin and the unexpected softness of his beard. “This okay?”

Gabriel looks at him with wary but steady eyes. Doesn’t move when Jesse leans in other than to open his mouth up under his and let Jesse lick his way inside, though his broken-fingered hand comes up and grabs at Jesse’s shirt when the kiss turns harder, more serious. When it starts to mean something.

Jesse pulls back after a few minutes, rests his forehead against Gabriel’s and catches his breath. Tries not to think about how this is their first kiss, now, when it’s all falling apart. He pulls back and looks down and - Gabriel is asleep, face slack and pain-free for the first time in hours.

With a smile he doesn’t know is on his face, Jesse relaxes down into the pillows, sliding a careful arm around Gabriel’s shoulders. Gabriel doesn’t react other than to nestle close into Jesse, shoving his face into his throat. His broken arm shifts and Gabriel lets out a soft sound of pain, but Jesse gently readjusts him and rubs his shoulder, and Gabriel sinks back into sleep, back into Jesse.

Jesse stares over Gabriel’s shoulder at the calm night sky, listens to the sound of Gabriel’s quiet breaths and occasional small noises of discomfort, and wonders if he’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for making it through all of that, come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


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